In short
Data linkage (or record linkage) is a method that brings together information that relates to the same individual, family, place or event from different data sources. During the COVID-19 pandemic, data linkage projects such as LINK-VACC proved to be a key source of information for epidemiological monitoring. It enabled continuous post-authorisation monitoring of COVID-19 vaccines and guided the next stages of the vaccination campaign. Building on the experience of LINK-VACC, the overall objective of EPI-LINK is to build an infrastructure that will improve routine surveillance of infectious diseases in Belgium. The infrastructure should be easily adaptable and could be used to inform the response during public health emergencies.
Sciensano will be coordinating the EPI-LINK project within its service Epidemiology of infectious diseases, and will be responsible for setting up the infrastructure.
Project description
The EPI-LINK project will involve linking infectious diseases data such as Epilabo data 2.0 (Network of sentinel laboratories — EPILABO), National Reference Centre (NRC) data (National Reference Centers in Human Microbiology), Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI) data (Severe Acute Respiratory Infection surveillance) and PediSurv (Surveillance of infectious diseases in children), on an individual level with other health and administrative datasets, external to Sciensano. This includes vaccination registers, mortality data and socio-economic and demographic information. The project will aim to create linkages of surveillance data with relevant clinical information and outcomes based on an individual’s national registry number, in order to build an infrastructure that will improve routine surveillance of infectious diseases in Belgium. This infrastructure should be easily adaptable and could be used to inform the response to public health emergencies as part of pandemic preparedness.
Objectives in routine surveillance
- Obtain more accurate information on vaccination status of cases
- Monitor cause-specific mortality, using a proxy
- Estimate vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization for respiratory infections
- Estimate vaccine effectiveness against specific infections and death
- Improve case identification of infectious diseases
- Assess socio-economic inequalities in vaccine uptake and infections
Objectives in public health emergencies
- Assess severity of disease (hospitalization and death) and associated risk factors
- Determine vaccine uptake, safety and effectiveness in real world during a public health emergency
- Assess inequalities in vaccine uptake and severity of infections
- Determine the number of infections among healthcare workers
- Determine vaccine uptake among healthcare workers
Sciensano's project investigator(s):
Service(s) working on this project
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