This story is part of our ongoing “People of PATH” series, in which we highlight a team member who’s moving humanity forward.
In Tuan Ngo’s hands, data saves lives.
With the click of a mouse, his computer screen displays real-time COVID-19 statistics for all of Vietnam: The number of confirmed cases. Hot spots in 13 provinces. The number of people who have had contact with an infected person. Tuan can even show—via a series of colorful, shape-shifting boxes—how many people are in isolation, whether they’re at home, in a government-organized isolation zone, or in a health care facility.
As PATH’s Health Information Systems team leader for Vietnam, Tuan was a key architect of the new online tracker. “We already had a very strong partnership with the Ministry of Health, and they approached us for help in creating online tools,” he says. “The government took COVID-19 very seriously from the start.” PATH joined with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a local IT company in a nine-day effort that transformed a cumbersome paper system into a sophisticated data visualization.
Armed with the data that Tuan helped capture and organize, the Ministry of Health tracks the pandemic in real time and coordinates its response. As of mid-April, no one in Vietnam—a nation of 97 million people—had died as a result of COVID-19.
Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Vũ Đức Đam reviews the COVID-19 dashboard—developed in just nine days by Tuan Ngo (in black at Đam’s right) and other members of the country’s rapid response team. Photo: DTT co/Nguyễn Thế Trung.
Wielding data against disease
Long before the emergence of COVID-19, Tuan had been creating systems to protect people’s health. He helped set up two of Vietnam’s five Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs), hubs where decision-makers gather to respond to disease outbreaks of all kinds. “As part of the EOC information security steering committee, I did a little bit of everything,” he says. Tuan investigated potential spaces in Hanoi; advised on updates; configured the audio and video systems; and set up the data servers. All five EOCs were activated when COVID-19 broke out in Vietnam.
Tuan also provides technical assistance for version 2.0 of the country’s National Immunization Information System—which PATH helped develop, pilot, and test. This sophisticated data warehouse stores and tracks immunization records, vaccine stocks, and distribution. Working with healthcare providers to develop content, Tuan also set up the e-learning course for the system.
His responsibilities extend from Vietnam throughout the Mekong region, to Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. This area faces some of the highest rates of antimicrobial resistance in the world. To confront this public health threat, Tuan led the development of an online surveillance portal to monitor antimicrobial resistance and health care–associated infections. This tool collates data from 16 different hospitals, putting much-needed information in the hands of health care leaders. Crucially, Tuan facilitated lab and hospital information interoperability, helping surveillance sites to report better and more timely data. Now, he’s busy integrating the animal health sector into the portal.
A page from Vietnam's real-time COVID-19 tracker shows the spread of the disease. Photo: PATH. Toda
A leader in digital health
“I always liked economic and health systems,” says Tuan. “In school, my favorite classes combined numbers and problem-solving for a deeper human purpose.” His aptitude led him to earn a master’s in information science at Paris-Sud University. From there, he went on to a role with USAID before joining PATH in 2013.
Next up for Tuan? “I want to position PATH as number one in digital health,” he says. His vision includes a whole-systems approach to health care for Vietnam—one that uses technology and systems engineering tools to lift up health workers, support the Ministry of Health, and advance health equity for everyone in the country.
