Letterkenny Institute of Technology (LYIT) have been collaborating with Ulster University on an all-Ireland Covid-19 data tracker. This initiative was developed as part of the Centre for Personalised Medicine (CPM), a €8.6m EU funded research project. Mr Kevin Blake, Research Database Manager from LYIT, has been working closely with Ulster University researcher Dr Magda Bucholc who created the Covid-19 data tracker and her colleague Dr Matthew Manktelow to curate collated data from Republic of Ireland data sources to feed into a Covid-19 data tracker which charts Covid-19 related positive cases, tests completed, and deaths in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  

The Covid-19 data tracker allows members of the public to access a visual comparator of collated Covid-19 data from official government and health sources across the island of Ireland. The tracker reports cases at the local government district in Northern Ireland and county level across the island of Ireland, providing gender and age breakdowns of reported cases, growth rates, and statistics per 100,000 of the population. The tracker also visualizes changes in daily mobility by region and across different categories of places and activities using Google and Apple feeds.  

Dr Michael McCann CPM lead at LYIT commented: 

 “Given the unique circumstance and challenges faced by the Island of Ireland, particularly in the border regions where we have substantial flow of people in both directions on a daily basis, the ability to provide the public with data collated from both jurisdictions is vitally important. This Covid-19 tracker provides much needed information in regard to the dynamic situation we are all faced with in terms of infection rates and provides insight into the daily situation on the Island. The global health crisis we are all facing clearly demonstrates the need for cross-border initiatives and LYIT welcome these critical opportunities to collaborate with our academic research partners in Northern Ireland”  

Dr Magda Bucholc, Lecturer in Data Analytics (George Moore Fellow) from the School of Computing, Engineering and Intelligent Systems at Ulster University’s Magee campus commented:  

“The availability of accurate and timely data to aid decision making is vital, especially during a global pandemic and the Covid-19 tracker from Ulster University aims to provide this much needed information to the general public in a format that is easy to understand. We have been compiling the available Northern Ireland data since mid-March and we recently added the same data parameters from the Republic of Ireland which is useful given the cross-border dynamic. The Covid-19 tracker is updated daily using official government and health sources across the island of Ireland and since its implementation we’ve received almost 65,000 website views. As a civic university, Ulster University is committed to playing its part in the fight against coronavirus and we will continue to provide this essential data for as long as it is required. As a regional University with a presence in the North West, Ulster University is delighted to continue to collaborate with our close neighbours at LYIT on this vital cross-border project.”  

The Covid-19 tracker can be viewed at https://nicovidtracker.org/ 

This project is supported by and the European Union’s INTERREG VA Programme, managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) and the Dr George Moore Endowment for Data Science at Ulster University. Match-funding for this project has been provided by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation in Ireland and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland.