Ludovic Floury, Vanessa Top and Luc Monimeau from the epidemiology and investigation team of the Directorate of Health and Social Affairs of New Caledonia, France. © Directorate of Health and Social Affairs of New Caledonia, France
New Caledonia, a French archipelago in the South Pacific, is home to 271 407 residents (according to the latest 2019 census). The territory boasts a high-quality health-care system, integrating modern public and private hospitals with a network of medico-social centres. The Médipôle Hospital is near the capital, Nouméa, and the Kuindo-Magnin Clinic is within the city. A public hospital also serves the Northern Province. However, disparities in health-care access persist between urban and rural regions.
The COVID-19 crisis, which began in March 2020 in France, highlighted the urgent need for an effective epidemiological management tool to track individuals infected with the virus and their contacts, and analyse real-time data to inform public health strategies.
Initially, management efforts relied on paper documentation and Excel spreadsheets. A comparative analysis of digital solutions was completed in November 2020 with the selection of the Go.Data platform as the most viable option.
Go.Data is an innovative digital tool developed by the World Health Organization in collaboration with GOARN partners specifically designed to support field-based outbreak response teams by facilitating case investigation and contact tracing activities. It offers more integrated and standardized data sets, real-time analyses to guide field operations, and various features to better organize and monitor contact tracing efforts.
By February 2021, Go.Data was successfully installed on secure local servers, fully compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and accessible only to public health service personnel. Follow-up forms were customized and the import of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and rapid diagnostic orientation test (TROD) results from medical laboratories automatized.
Go.Data was operational during the increase of COVID-19 in September 2021. However, the rapid increase in cases rendered contact tracing unmanageable, limiting the tool's application to confirmed positive cases. To address the challenges encountered, case import files were developed utilizing R scripts to efficiently identify new cases and reinfections, and to avoid manual entry of large volumes of data, which can be extremely labour intensive. Additionally, a dashboard was created in R to facilitate ongoing monitoring of the epidemic.
Building on insights gained from this experience, New Caledonia decided to expand the use of Go.Data for other diseases. As of December 2024, Go.Data has been implemented for pertussis, hepatitis E, leprosy, meningitis, measles and tuberculosis.
Epidemiology and investigation team using Go.Data in response to an outbreak, New Caledonia, France. © Directorate of Health and Social Affairs of New Caledonia, France
The implementation of Go.Data has brought together the investigation and epidemiology teams on a single platform, eliminating the need for duplicate data entries across various systems and data discrepancies across teams. Go.Data has now been integrated into New Caledonia’s information system, allowing the data team to centralize data production within a single software environment before its transfer to the data centre for anonymization. Subsequently, the anonymized data is made accessible to the teams, enabling them to develop relevant dashboards. Jean-Baptiste Gaumery, investigation nurse, reflects on his experience:
"Before Go.Data, contact tracing was a real headache, often managed on paper or with scattered files. Today, we have a centralized platform that allows us to visualize the chains of transmission in real time and optimize our interventions."
Throughout this process, the WHO team’s support was instrumental, providing essential guidance and expertise for a successful digital transition.