"How do you get to the data?" We discussed these and other exciting questions about data research with Prof. Kreuter from the LMU Institute of Statistics at our digital fireside on January 24. For example, it is essential to address the motivation of organizations to provide data. Prof. Kreuter was able to report from her coleridge initiative project from her time at the University of Maryland that individual organizations are only willing to share their data if they themselves benefit from it. Applied to our situation, this means that if we as researchers want to collect data from GP practices, we have to offer them a clearly recognizable advantage. One example on a small scale is the Influenza Working Group, which offers GP practices a forecast of upcoming influenza waves in return for weekly influenza reports.

Assessing the quality of data is also highly dependent on the circumstances. During the pandemic, for example, random surveys from social media were used very successfully to predict individual waves of infection. However, when it comes to less egalitarian variables than a Covid infection, such as a risk of depression, more precise data searches are necessary.

We would like to thank Prof. Kreuter for the inspiring evening and hope that we can all build our research on this.