Technology
The EIOS system
The EIOS system is a fit- for-purpose but constantly evolving web-based system designed to augment and accelerate global public health intelligence (PHI) activities, built on a long-standing collaboration between WHO and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission.
It benefits from the experience gained in the Early Alerting and Reporting (EAR) project of the Global Health Security Initiative (GHSI) and the Hazard Detection and Risk Assessment System (HDRAS), as well as collaborations with other global initiatives and projects such as ProMED, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), HealthMap and the Europe Media Monitor (EMM).
What does the system do?
Each day, the system collates hundreds of thousands of articles from a broad range of sources, including traditional online media and specific social media sources, government and official web sites, news aggregators, blogs and expert groups, and collaborating initiatives. It runs these sources through a series of text mining and analytical modules to sort and categorize articles by topics, country, language, source and contextual indices. The system regularly checks for new information, which is downloaded and automatically processed and published through the secure EIOS user interface within a few minutes, accessible only to authorised individuals within the EIOS community. This leads to a continuous flow of new articles in the EIOS system, which registered users can interact with in various ways – both individually, as well as collaboratively with others. Within the system, each collaborating organisation has its own space and can securely share information within and across organisations.
What does the system allow users to do?
Evolving technology behind the EIOS system helps public health experts navigate the ocean of publicly available information, extract what is important, and understand and assess it in time and place. By capitalising on ongoing research and advances in natural language processing and machine learning, the EIOS system contributes to and benefits from the evolution of artificial intelligence for augmented PHI. EIOS technology does not replace the experts, but rather supports them, enabling them to rapidly sift through huge volumes of data from a wide variety of sources coming in at high velocity. This helps the identification of events in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take.
"EIOS is an innovative initiative bringing together the best available resources from artificial intelligence (AI) and Epidemic Intelligence (EI) to increase the capacity of early detection of events through surveillance efforts."
- Thiago Augusto Hernandes Rocha, PAHO, Brazil
EIOS is an innovative initiative bringing together the best available resources from artificial intelligence (AI) and Epidemic Intelligence (EI) to increase the capacity of early detection of events through surveillance efforts. I consider EIOS to be a powerful tool capable of increasing stakeholder action in epidemiological surveillance.
The main value added by EIOS is the increase in monitoring capabilities concurrently with a reduction in the time required for implementation. By integrating main rumor monitoring sources and the active search for open source information, EIOS improves detection capacity and reduces the time and effort required to undertake such actions.
"The EIOS [initiative] has led efforts to bring stakeholders together for the advancement of EBS, which will certainly contribute to the improvement in outbreak control."
- Geoffrey Namara, WHO, Nigeria
One of the biggest reasons for delay in response has been delays in detection. The delay in detection of a signal has been largely due to the lack of appropriate tools to help teams involved in detection. EIOS fills that gap. Its ability to be all hazard, all geography and multilingual makes it the ideal tool to support early detection.
In layman's language, EIOS is this “all in one package” or application that scans [selected sources on] the Web including content retrieved by other scanning tools for a user-defined set of key words and locations. It presents the material that fulfills the selection criteria in a user-friendly way.
[In the past,] WHO at the country level [in Nigeria] was hardly doing any event-based surveillance (EBS). Much of its role was to support the government with the verification and follow up of an identified signal. EIOS has changed that. The country office now conducts routine event based surveillance along with the government, using the EIOS system to detect signals early on. At the global level, EIOS is going to lead to a harmonized and efficient growth of EBS. The EIOS [initiative] has led efforts to bring stakeholders together for the advancement of EBS, which will certainly contribute to the improvement in outbreak control.