The point of departure for the research at RIDES is that rational decision-making during serious infectious disease outbreaks and pandemics cannot be based on individual analyses or statements by individual experts. Nor can national recommendations always be applied at the local level. During pandemics, healthcare needs an information infrastructure that is globally rooted and that at the national and local levels supports the monitoring of the spread of infection and the planning of measures without disrupting the day-to-day care operations. Reliable pandemic information is a basis for the ability of society and healthcare to limit the consequences of the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic.
The rapid development of pandemics requires that information management is well prepared in advance. The use of healthcare information infrastructure during pandemics requires consistency in concepts and structures for rapid and reliable present-day analyses and in order to be able to comment on an ongoing pandemic course with evidence-based evidence. Today, it is unclear to what extent local and regional health care organisations have been prepared for the pandemic situation. The infrastructure that has been developed within the collaboration between Linköping University and Region Östergötland is not a replacement but a complement to the information resources available at global, national and government levels.
The research group RIDES (Regional Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Simulations) coordinated at Linköping University has been active since 2005 in collaboration with Region Östergötland with support from the Swedish Research Council, MSB and Vinnova.
