Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS)

Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS)

Saving Lives through Early Detection

About EIOS

The Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) initiative is a unique collaboration between various public health stakeholders around the globe. It brings together new and existing initiatives, networks and systems to create a unified all-hazards, One Health approach to early detection, verification and assessment of public health risks and threats using open source information. Creating a community of practice for public health intelligence (PHI) that includes Member States, international organisations, research institutes and other partners and collaborators is at the heart of the initiative; saving lives through early detection of threats and subsequent intervention its ultimate goal.

The EIOS community of practice is supported by an evolving EIOS system, which not only connects other systems and actors – including ProMed, HealthMap and the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) – but also promotes and catalyses new and innovative collaborative development. The EIOS system builds on a long-standing collaboration between WHO and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC) to develop a system for public health intelligence and responds to the need for a global initiative to bring together PHI efforts. The EIOS initiative benefits from the experience gained in the Early Alerting and Reporting (EAR) project of the Global Health Security Initiative (GHSI) and draws on experience from the Hazard Detection and Risk Assessment System (HDRAS) and MEDISYS / Europe Media Monitor, all of which were developed by JRC. It is aimed at consolidating a wide array of endeavours and platforms to build a strong PHI community supported by robust, harmonised and standardised PHI systems and frameworks across organisations and jurisdictions.

In September 2017, WHO accepted leadership of EIOS under the Health Emergencies Programme (WHE) with a governance structure involving multiple stakeholders. The Coordination Group is made up of twelve organizations, networks, and government bodies who serve two-year terms.

 

 

Watch

EIOS Global Community

EIOS Training and Expansion

EIOS Frequently Asked Questions

EIOS Global Technical Meeting 2019

EIOS Global Technical Meeting 2019

EIOS 2019 in Review

Testimonials

Using EIOS to identify rumour patterns linked to outbreaks

“The use of the EIOS platform provided data to identify patterns in the capture of rumours associated with events of epidemiological interest. In 2016, for the issue of Zika virus in Brazil, the sensitivity of the rumours captured by EIOS was quite impressive. The comparison between the number of articles captured and the discrepancy with the raw expected number of rumours allowed identifying a peak of news involving the issue of Zika virus. Whenever we observe a detachment between the moving average and the gross number of articles something unusual is happening. This same pattern can be identified in the measles outbreak in 2018 and now again in the measles outbreak of 2019 in São Paulo.”
Thiago Hernandes Rocha, PAHO Brazil

Earlier identification of pneumonic plague

"We got a real life demonstration of how EIOS can benefit our current event-based monitoring, during the 2019 WHO EIOS Global Technical Meeting. On November 13, several Korean media reported two confirmed cases of pneumonic plague in Beijing, China. Very limited information was available with our regular EBS sources, but we were able to find more contents from German sources thanks to the multi-language support functions of EIOS. That information enabled us to do a faster and more comprehensive rapid risk assessment of the situation."
Lee Seon Kui, Korea CDC

Getting information into the hands of people that need it

“When we see information we push it out to country offices (COs) and others; to alert that we will be monitoring a certain event/situation. This establishes a working relationship with that particular CO or expert. Information exchange is the currency for EBS - value in collaborating when you share information. Yesterday (December 4th 2019), we picked up an increase in cases in malaria in Costa Rica and sent this to the malaria programme. They in turn conducted more research and corroborated this information, which led to modifying travel advice and ‘Yellow Book'. We are getting the information back into the hands of the people that need it.”
Ray Arthur, CDC

Earlier detection of African Swine Fever using EIOS

“During 2019 we had several success stories. The main one was the early detection of new occurrences of African Swine Fever in Member Countries in Asia. Around 20% of immediate notifications (alert messages) received in 2019 were due to active search of rumour activity.”
Paolo Tizzani, OIE