Roberton Timothy, McKinnon Robert, Podkowiak Thomas, Schmidt Jared, Winfrey William, Walker Neff
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Avenir Health, Glastonbury, Connecticut, USA.
J Glob Health. 2025 Feb 21;15:03012. doi: 10.7189/jogh.15.03012.
The Lives Saved Tool (LiST) is a widely used software package for modelling changes in child, neonatal, and maternal mortality. Until recently, it has mainly been used as a standalone tool that people manipulate using its desktop or online interface. The developers of LiST have now created a web-based application programming interface (API) allowing other software programmes to interact directly with LiST to use its internal calculations. This opens the door for using LiST within more complex models, for which coverage-to-mortality calculations are only a part, or for building topic-specific tools with a custom interface. The API also allows other software programmes to access the data that has been gathered and maintained by the LiST team on the effectiveness and coverage of 70+ interventions, along with data on mortality rates, cause-of-death structures, and child nutritional status in low- and middle-income countries. In this viewpoint, we describe how we see the API being used and give examples of tools that are already using it. Our hope is that others can now take full advantage of LiST and its 20+ years of development to build their own tools for effective data use in global health.
挽救生命工具（LiST）是一个广泛使用的软件包，用于模拟儿童、新生儿和孕产妇死亡率的变化。直到最近，它主要被用作一种独立工具，人们通过其桌面或在线界面进行操作。LiST的开发者现在创建了一个基于网络的应用程序编程接口（API），允许其他软件程序直接与LiST交互，以使用其内部计算。这为在更复杂的模型中使用LiST打开了大门，在这些模型中，覆盖率到死亡率的计算只是一部分，或者用于构建具有自定义界面的特定主题工具。该API还允许其他软件程序访问LiST团队收集和维护的数据，这些数据涉及70多种干预措施的有效性和覆盖率，以及低收入和中等收入国家的死亡率、死因结构和儿童营养状况数据。在这一观点中，我们描述了我们认为该API的使用方式，并给出了已经在使用它的工具示例。我们希望其他人现在能够充分利用LiST及其20多年的开发成果，构建自己的工具，以便在全球卫生领域有效使用数据。
