Enrique Nieves Jr (Acting Director, Division of Integrated Surveillance Systems and Services (DISSS), CDC, NCPHI) and Jay Jones are recommending Mesh4x for "...anyone who needs to synchronize data using Epi Info™". You can see their recent publication in the PanAfrican Medical Journal titled: Epi Info™: Now an Open-source application that continues a long and productive “life” through CDC support and funding.
One by-product of this ongoing effort is that the information is appropriately tagged and geo-located. The A(H1N1) workspace allows you to subscribe to all the information or to a filter of your own. The tags include information beyond just a disease category, symptom, or syndrome, but we also tried to capture other important information; such as policy issues (e.g., vaccination, school closure, travel advisory, etc.). However, our primary goal is not to become another information source, rather to be able to provide a good situational awareness of the event in order to respond effectively. We are trying to address the following problems that are inherent in the current early detection systems:
Classic problem: too much data, not enough information. Why aren’t the key indicators noticed earlier?
Noisy data—low reliability—
Need to keep the human in the loop (a lot of this is still an art).
Sources not always obvious - we saw emerging sources of information, like the citizen reporting over a Google map (in the past much attention was paid to sources like Internet search queries (e.g., Eysenbach, Ginsberg, Polgreen, Hulth, and Cooper), over the counter medications sales (e.g., Wagner/RODS Lab), absenteeism (e.g., Wagner/RODS Lab), as opposed to ER chief complaints or routine disease surveillance hierarchical systems).
Threat profile keeps changing- is not known for something like a SARS/SARI (e.g., Swine Flu or other things like it).
Political and Organizational Boundaries (Note that we weren't able to perfectly communicate the first indications of SARS, or the outbreaks of H5N1 in China, and we saw that happen again with the H1N1 Swine outbreak).
Need to set up the need for shared collaboration spaces and geographic distribution. Not only do we need human experts in the loop, but they need to share the hunches and concerns. Discussion needs to identify communities of interest. Different specialists are involved based on the nature of the threat.
While all this is important, I'd like to emphasize the fact that the best data is still coming from old-fashioned shoe leather epidemiology. We have to be true to ourselves and remember that, with all the information, new tools, open networks of collaborators, etc., we still missed the early indication(s) of the A(H1N1) outbreak. I remember when I was in the trenches of SARS back in 2003, we didn't have the breadth and depth of the information nor the tools we currently have. This calls for an action to rethink our strategies around early detection especially for emerging infectious diseases...
I presented the following at the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance (MBDS), Information Communication and Technology Forum which took place April 2nd–3rd, 2009 in Mukdahan Province, Thailand.
I. ICT Developments in Mobile Technology for Global Public Health: InSTEDD Collaboration Tools
At the end of the forum, Ed and I answered questions related to the utility and feasibility of GeoChat and Evolve in the various MBDS member countries.
Birds' Survival Relies On World's Largest Crab Orgy
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Mating season for horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Bay brings millions of
crabs onto the beaches. It's a feast for tens of thousands of migratory
shorebirds...
2009 Call for Abstracts
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The 2009 Scientific Program Committee is now accepting abstract submissions
for this year's conference. Below is the letter that was sent out to the
Societ...
Updated "Guide to creating maps with Stata"
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The guide to creating maps with Stata has been updated with new links to
third-party software.
Map created with spmap in Stata: length of country names
[im...
Preventable Disease Outbreak: Mumps in Europe
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Image courtesy www.cdc.gov
Image courtesy http://phil.cdc.gov
Despite the availability of the MMR vaccine, mumps has made a resurgence in
many par...
High income - rare in tropical land-locked countries
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The role of geography for the prospects of development has been hotly
debated the last decade. Economists, like Jeffrey Sachs, have suggested that
a countr...
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