Swiss Re puts pioneering data and analytics platform at the service of global health and joins The Trinity Challenge

By becoming a member of The Trinity Challenge, Swiss Re is joining leaders across the academic, non-profit and private sectors including Google, Microsoft and Facebook, GlaxoSmithKline, McKinsey & Company, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London. The Trinity Challenge aims to develop ideas and tools for tackling the three stages of infectious disease emergencies – identification, response and recovery.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Swiss Re, in collaboration with leading big data analytics company Palantir Technologies, has been integrating relevant data sources related to COVID-19’s health, economic and social dimensions (such as aggregate mobility and behavioural patterns) on one platform: the Risk Resilience Center. The platform provides access to the world’s richest data on COVID-19, integrating publicly available global data from 100+ sources. It is global in coverage, granular in depth, and continuously enriched. Swiss Re will make the data assets and analytics tools available to The Trinity Challenge participants based on their specific research topics.

Ian Haycock, Chief Data Officer at Swiss Re, said: “As one of the world’s leading tech- and data-enabled reinsurers we have been using data to make the world more resilient for more than 150 years. We are proud to build on this legacy by opening our pioneering Risk Resilience Center for the benefit of global health. It typically takes weeks to have data integrated and curated – our platform updates, checks and transforms datasets automatically and multiple times per hour, with a continuous flow of incoming data, allowing for cross-country comparisons and drilldowns on states and regions. Equipped with these cutting-edge capabilities, The Trinity Challenge participants can analyse the spread of a pandemic, the economic impact of lockdowns or the success of behavioural changes like wearing a mask in limiting further infection.“

Dame Sally Davies, Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, former Chief Medical Officer of England and Convenor of The Trinity Challenge, said: “Having access to this wealth of data and analytics creates a tremendous opportunity for academics, researchers and analysts. It provides the basis for new modelling, ground-breaking analyses and actionable solutions. We invite researchers and analysts from the public and private sector to apply to join the Challenge, work with Swiss Re and Palantir, and make their insights available as global public goods.“

A pioneering data platform to help the world be better prepared for health crises

Swiss Re’s Risk Resilience Center has already been put into practice successfully. For example, the platform enables the analysis of COVID-19 infections, hospital stays, and mortalities for specific countries. Large companies already apply these insights to adjust their workplace policies. By spotting portfolio accumulations, insurers can deploy policyholder support in areas such as mental health management. Findings are also being used by insurers to confirm whether they are sufficiently capitalised in face of the COVID-19 crisis and to adjust this as needed.

The platform lets The Trinity Challenge participants evaluate how stressed a country’s medical system is at a given point in time and enables predictions by combining real-time hospital and ICU bed occupancy rates with model projections. This helps allow for better planning such as the assessment of needed medical resources and their allocation. Swiss Re is currently also reaching out to governments and multilateral development banks with the aim of providing them with access to the platform pro bono.

Organisations and individuals from the areas of data science, public health, economics, epidemiology, and industry who would like to learn more or are interested in participating in The Trinity Challenge can visit https://thetrinitychallenge.org. Formal applications opened on 12 October and successful submissions will compete for a prize of GBP 10 million to be awarded in May 2021.