Selection of Publicly Accessible Tuberculosis Data Systems

Various data systems have been built to inform decisions about interventions and investments to eradicate tuberculosis. The data systems highlighted here illustrate different types of TB-related information to support operational research and decision making.

TB Data-Driven Decision Making

In the fight against tuberculosis (TB), access to and timely interpretation of accurate data is crucial to ensure that appropriate and necessary investments are made and that suitable interventions are taken. As part of its effort to make TB data available for decision making, the TB Data, Impact Assessment and Communications Hub (TB DIAH) analyzed TB data systems available online and compiled this report. The intention is to help those working with data and those interested in accessing data to find different types of TB-related information. TB DIAH also hopes that it will help readers discover new sources of information in support of operational research and decision making.

If you would like to suggest additional systems to be added to this resource, please contact us at hub@tbdiah.org.

Description: The WHO Global TB Programme website includes global TB data, as well as reports and documents detailing annual progress in the fight against TB, information on TB Task Forces, as well a multitude of resources detailing guidelines and handbooks, initiatives and strategies to prevent, treat and end TB; tools to strengthen and mobilize communities in response to TB, intensify research and diagnosis, as well as strategies for tackling the problem of drug-resistant (DR) TB. Guidelines, Operational Handbooks, and E-Learning training courses are made available via the WHO TB Knowledge Sharing Platform mobile application from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

URL: https://www.who.int/teams/global-tuberculosis-programme/data

Primary audience

TB researchers and public health professionals, general public

Language(s)

English; TB Country Profiles available in English, French, Russian, Spanish

Countries/regions covered

Global

Data types

A wide set of indicators such as TB burden estimates, incidence estimates, case notifications, laboratory diagnostic services, treatment outcomes, screening and preventative treatment, TB policies and services, as well as community engagement activities and budgets and expenditures for TB services.

Data source(s)

National TB Programs, WHO

Data visualizations

  • Annual global TB report published since 1997 summarizes and interprets data for a broad audience
  • Country dashboards provide a variety of data on cases, mortality, treatment success rate, incidence, preventive treatment, financing, and universal health coverage
  • Regional and global dashboards
  • Detailed charts for financing
  • Case notifications by month (for countries that report monthly)
  • Global/regional/country charts and maps focused on diagnosis, notification, and treatment of multidrug- and rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis (MDR/RR-TB)
  • Interactive visualizations and maps related to drug-resistant TB diagnosis, notification, and treatment

Exporting data and data use

Data and the Data Dictionary that defines variables can be downloaded in CSV format or printed from the site. Charts can be saved as screenshots.

Data are provided in accordance with WHO’s data sharing policy and their use are subject to WHO’s terms and conditions.

Description: The WHO Global TB Report app allows users to explore and interact with all global TB data available in the WHO Global Tuberculosis Report, including detailed indicators, comparisons between countries, regions, and data charting. Also included are “Key Facts” and “Targets and Progress” sections to help with interpretation of the overall global data. A separate WHO TB Guide app provides additional TB information such as guidelines, operational handbooks, and the WHO training catalog with eLearning focused on TB, which are also available on the WHO TB Knowledge Sharing Platform at https://tbksp.org/.

URL for Apple:  https://apps.apple.com/app/tb-report/id1483112411

URL for Android:  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.adappt.whotbreport

Primary audience

TB researchers and public health professionals, general public

Language(s)

English, French, Russian, Spanish

Countries/regions covered

Global

Data types

Country indicators related to TB, as well as indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals associated with TB incidence, population estimates.

Data source(s)

National TB Programs, WHO

Data visualizations

  • Slides providing:
    • Key Facts
    • Targets and Progress
  • Detailed historical charts and data by country/area, region or self-defined group, for the latest report year in the following categories:
    • Estimates of TB Burden
    • Notifications
    • UHC and social protection
    • TB/HIV care in new and relapse TB patients
    • Drug-resistant TB
    • Treatment success rate
    • TB preventive treatment (TPT)
    • TB financing
    • Cases attributable to five risk factors
    • SDG indicators associated with TB incidence
  • High-level comparisons between countries/regions or a single country to the world or its region

Exporting data and data use

Data downloads/updates when the app is open and online so it can be accessed while offline.

Data are provided in accordance with WHO’s data sharing policy and their use are subject to WHO’s terms and conditions.

Description:  To support the Stop TB Partnership’s vision of a world free of TB, the site contains dashboards and other visualizations of TB data and targets, focusing on areas like incidence, treatment and people missing from care, and funding.  It also includes a wide variety of TB-related resources including information on advocacy and plans to end TB, the Global Drug Facility (GDF) to facilitate access to diagnostics and treatment, governance of TB programs, United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting (UNHLM) targets and commitments, and funding opportunities to promote innovation.

URL: https://dashboards.stoptb.org/

Primary audience

General public, public health professionals, pharmaceutical professionals

Language(s)

English

Countries/regions covered

Global

Data types

Country indicators on incidence, treatment, targets, funding, and data on other disease and social factors impacting the fight against TB.

Data source(s)

Stop TB Partnership, WHO, GDF, TB REACH, TB Caucus, USAID, Global Plan to End TB, Global Fund, Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, World Bank

Data visualizations

  • TB Medicines Dashboard organizes information from 13 data sources to help increase efficiency, track progress on development and quality assurance, identify gaps, support market shaping, facilitate benchmarking and guidelines revision, and support procurement for anti-TB drugs and related supplies.
  • Interactive Country Dashboards include key estimates on people with TB, including those lost to follow-up, coinfected with HIV, deaths, comparisons among other causes of death, as well as information on UNHLM Targets and TB funding for each country.
  • Mapping tool with selectable indicators for Burden & Mortality, Access to Care, Treating TB, Funding TB, Global Plan, and UNHLM Targets displayable by year starting with 2014.
  • Missing Treatment Dashboard displays the number of people with TB missing from care by country, by year starting with 2012.
  • Charts showing year-over-year data on infections, treatment, drug resistant TB and treatment, UNHLM targets, and resources needed to meet targets, age/sex disaggregation, funding, medicines, and progress toward Global Plan Targets.

Exporting data and data use

Charts and maps can be downloaded as image files and summary data downloads as Microsoft Excel or CSV files.

Description:  The TB DIAH Data Hub is an online portal for TB program managers, TB technical advisors, and key country stakeholders including National TB Program (NTP) staff to access global and national-level data to support their performance-based management of TB programs. The Data Hub offers visualizations of publicly available World Health Organization (WHO) data as well as COVID-19 related government stringency measures from the University of Oxford’s COVID-19 Government Response Tracker and United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting (UNHLM) target data provided by the Stop TB Partnership.

URL: https://hub.tbdiah.org/

Primary audience

USAID Missions, NTP staff, implementing partner staff, general public

Language(s)

English, French and Russian (limited aspects of the site)

Countries/regions covered

30+ USAID TB supported countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and Eurasia, and Latin America and the Caribbean

Data types

TB indicators from country TB programs, calculated variables based on these indicators, and UNHLM target data.

Data source(s)

TB data for the USAID TB-supported countries are generated from the NTPs and submitted annually to the WHO or the Stop TB Partnership (for UNHLM targets)

Data visualizations

  • Country and summary dashboards with year-over-year visualizations divided into indicators supporting USAID’s reach, cure, and prevent objectives.
  • COVID-19 dashboard to visualize the impact of the pandemic on countries and their TB response/services by country.
  • Dashboard with pre-defined visualizations focused on drug-resistant TB by country.
  • PBMEF (Performance-Based Monitoring and Evaluation Framework) indicator definitions and related visualizations help contextualize a country’s status on TB indicators.
  • The Data Explorer gives users the opportunity to create their own visualizations based on the underlying data.

Exporting data and data use

Each visualization can be exported in multiple formats along with the underlying data tables in CSV file format. All data and visualizations can be freely reused.

Online/offline access

Creation and modification of visualizations are done online. Data downloads can be analyzed offline using other software, and online visualizations can be downloaded or printed for offline use.

Additional notes and special features

The Data Explorer gives users access to all underlying data to create their own analyses, and all predefined charts can be customized by selecting or deselecting data elements.

Description:  The TB Portals is a global collaboration for interdisciplinary data-driven research and data sharing with a focus on drug-resistant (DR) TB. The website collects and shares de-identified data from 40 sites in 16 countries with a high burden of DR TB. These data are made available to researchers through a set of portals focused on different aspects of TB cases, and the site includes analytical tools to help researchers analyze the data and create ad hoc virtual cohorts to support their research goals. Anyone can view the data through the portals, and researchers can request access to download the data for further analysis, which includes signing a Data Use Agreement.

URL: https://tbportals.niaid.nih.gov/

Primary audience

Researchers focused on TB

Language(s)

English

Countries/regions covered

Includes over 8,000 cases from Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Nigeria, Romania, and Ukraine.

Data types

Socioeconomic, geographic, clinical, laboratory, radiological, and genomic data from TB cases based on underlying physical sample data collected from individuals.

Data source(s)

Primarily case data from clinic-based patient populations

Data visualizations

Multiple analytical tools are available on the site to assist data-driven research and projects with domain-specific and meta-domain analysis.

  • A Case Browser provides access to case records, including imaging and bacterial genomic information. 
  • The Genomic Analysis Portal allows users to explore genomic variation in the data available through the portal, and, to use open-source drug resistance prediction algorithms or compute genomic distance between samples based on uploaded gene sequencing data, among others. 
  • The Radiomics Analysis Portal shows x-rays and CT studies from case files, allowing users to save virtual cohorts and compare individual x-rays and case data or view these in a timeseries.
  • TB Portals Depot hosts analytics tools for working with cohorts to analyze across clinical data, bacterial genomes, CT studies, and x-rays.
  • The website provides educational information about TB in virtual reality (VR) and interactive 3D renderings of lung changes in specific cases are provided.

Exporting data and data use

To make copies of data, all data requesters must agree to and sign the TB Portals Data Use Agreement (DUA) and TB Portals Acknowledgements and Citations Guidelines prior to being given access to download data. Data available through the analytical tools is subject to similar limitations on use.

Online/offline access

The visualizations and analytical tools are available for online viewing only, but data can be downloaded after agreeing to the TB Portals terms.

Description:  Provides detailed case data on verified cases reported to the CDC as part of the CDC’s Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER), developed to “promote information-driven decision making by placing timely, useful facts in the hands of public health practitioners and researchers,” and to provide specific information from the CDC to the general public.

URL:https://wonder.cdc.gov/tb.html

Primary audience

Researchers

Language(s)

English

Countries/regions covered

The United States of America

Data types

Incidence data 28 different variables (categories include: location, demographic, risk factors, disease criteria, therapy issues) included in data sets from 1993–2021

Data source(s)

CDC national TB surveillance system. Each data collection contains technical notes with more information about the data sources for the database.

Data visualizations

  • Map visualization of case numbers by state
  • Charts can be customized in various types and sizes
  • Specific data queries and visualization options can be saved as a URL to be shared and run again

Exporting data and data use

Detailed exports available. Users can filter and sort data by any and all of the data variables. Each data result contains suggested citation information.

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