Data Sharing Platforms for Influenza and RSV

Approach

The aim of the project was to build two additional data platforms modelling the key driving factors of serohub. Our approach had to support four primary aims: be a community space for researchers, allow for critical appraisal of diagnostic trials, host study-related documents and be a cloud-based, meta-analysis platform.

Objectives

Build a centralised platform where researchers can share studies, publications, and data easily
Incorporate four key platform elements: community, trial summary, document, and meta-analysis
Build internal capabilities with core documentation and training
Connect with the PubMed research library so that articles could be automatically published on the platform.

Achievements

Aligned with research, management and technical teams on data infrastructure
Built a platform using the Netlify CMS to easily manage content
Used cost effective tools like GitHub and Hugo to enable greater levels of collaboration and scalability
Delivered a public website and a service environment for researchers
Created extensive users guides and project documentation
Delivered digital training and Q&A sessions to staff to ensure scalability.

Key results

New platforms live for Influenza & RSV
Shortcode integration with PubMed to deliver journal articles

FAQs

How do you build on the serohub success?

The Influenza and RSV platforms represent the second phase of GoSmarter’s partnership with the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research. The success of serohub — built during the COVID-19 crisis to enable global seroprevalence data sharing — provided a proven model that could be replicated and extended for related respiratory diseases.

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and Influenza are significant public health concerns in their own right, particularly for paediatric populations. Understanding their seroprevalence — how widely they have circulated in a population — requires the same kind of collaborative data infrastructure that proved so valuable for COVID-19 research. By extending the serohub model to these diseases, the Helmholtz Centre is building a persistent infrastructure for respiratory disease research that will remain valuable long after the pandemic recedes.

What is the PubMed integration?

One of the distinctive technical achievements in this project was the PubMed shortcode integration — enabling journal articles from the PubMed research library to be automatically published on the platform. This removes a significant manual step from the research community’s workflow: instead of researchers having to manually add publications to the platform, the system can pull them directly from the world’s largest biomedical research library.

This kind of integration reflects GoSmarter’s approach to data platforms: look for the manual steps that researchers and users spend the most time on, and automate them where the data infrastructure makes it possible.

What is the value of open source and sustainable architecture?

The decision to use GitHub and Hugo — open-source tools widely used in the developer community — reflects a commitment to sustainability and transparency. Research institutions need platforms that will still work in five or ten years, that can be maintained by future teams who were not involved in the original build, and that do not create dependency on commercial platforms with unpredictable cost trajectories. GoSmarter’s architecture choices consistently prioritise these long-term considerations alongside the immediate technical requirements.

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