How open data can help save lives

When somebody has a heart attack, the first thing you do is make them comfortable. After calling an ambulance, you locate a defibrillator.

Finding a defibrillator can spell the difference between life and death. It’s essential they’re located in easy-to-reach places, and using open data can make sure that they’re positioned in areas where people are most at risk of heart attacks.

Last October, Trafford Innovation and Intelligence Lab helped the mayor of Trafford to decide where to place defibrillators around the city by analysing open data.

A group formed comprised of consultants in public health, a data specialist, a paramedic, and local organisations. Together they looked at open-data indicators that would help them to decide where to place 15 defibrillators: mortality rates, obesity levels, rates of cardiovascular disease, and levels of physical activity in the area.

Jamie Whyte, head of the Trafford Innovation and Intelligence Lab and a member of Trafford Council, said the group was able to help save lives by using purely open data to analyse the best places to locate the new defibrillators. They crowdmapped the locations of existing units, in GP surgeries, schools, and sports centres, drew up a list of places with no defibrillators, and merged the two datasets.

Nigel Shadbolt, the chairman of the Open Data Institute, says open data can be vital in life-threatening situations. He explains how Ushahidi, a data management system, gathers information from a crowd and transforms it into easy visualisations that can show what happened during an incident. It came to prominence during the 2013 Kenyan general elections, when it helped to expose killings during the campaign.

Ushahidi has since been used in emergency relief campaigns, including during the Nepal earthquake. It allows emergency servicesto make decisions based on facts rather than guesswork, something that’s especially important when resources are scarce.

Shadbolt explains how collecting the data relies on the power of the crowd. “There’s a basic information layer, which is then supplemented by people adding more data into it. For example over 48 hours 4000 volunteers worked in Kathmandu to map roads that had been destroyed during the earthquake.” This helped emergency services reach victims.

The most interesting thing with providing raw data, says Shadbolt, is that you provide the information and the apps “think” about it when a situation arises. “The whole genius of the web is that you don’t even know how the data you put up will be used. For this reason it’s best to collect more information than you think you might ever need.”

Emma Thwaites, a spokesperson for the Open Data Institute, explains that data layering is where open data can have the most impact.