Assessing & Managing Events
Once a public health crisis has been detected...then what? Effective event management processes are critical to follow the event, assess it on a continual basis, determine the most effective time and way to respond, then "rinse and repeat"! By ensuring that events are documented and shared early, actions are better informed and appropriate, based on well-founded risk assessments and international best practices. In this session, the panel will share some of the current systems being developed for assessing and managing events, allowing us to discuss similarities and differences, strengths and gaps, and explore ways to harmonise and connect systems if and where appropriate.
Intel-based Triggers and Change in Biosecurity Risk
Uday Divi, Assistant Director of Biosecurity Integrated Information System and Analytics, Department of Agriculture, Government of Australia
The Australian Department of Agriculture relies on information from a variety of sources including the International Biosecurity Intelligence System (IBIS) to identify biosecurity risk events.The amount of intel and other information can be overwhelming and looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack is time consuming and difficult. There is a strong desire to automate the monitoring and searching of the biosecurity needles as much as possible to 'trigger' some form of action. The presentation will focus on current efforts in the department to develop an integrated data-driven workflow for real-time assessment of 'Change in Biosecurity Risk' and its management.
Event and Threat Management System (ETMS)
Jordi Borrell Pique, Scientific Officer Epidemic Intelligence, European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is currently developing a new event and threat management system that will be launched in the coming months. The ETMS has been designed in order to assure and effective and smooth collaboration among the European Commission, EU agencies, national public health institutes, ministries of health and the scientific community. This will allow to share in real time relevant information to let an integrated and quick response from all stakeholders involved on the detection, assessment and communication of threats of infectious diseases in the European Union and the European Economic Area.
How SORMAS can validate signals of EIOS and process subsequent response measures
Gerard Krause, Chair and scientific lead of SORMAS, Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research
SORMAS is an open source mobile digital Surveillance Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System, that integrates event and indicator-based surveillance with process management of outbreak investigation and response. It contains process models for unknown emerging and 10 defined epidemic prone diseases and customized use interfaces for 12 different users (local health provider, laboratory, international operation center). SORMAS complements EIOS by offering a comprehensive system for epidemiological validation of these signals and executing the public health response to it. The system is currently being rolled out to Ghana and Nigeria and already covers a population of over 75 million people.
The WHO Emergency Management and Response System (EMRS)
Ayman Badr, IT Programme Manager, World Health Organziation
The WHO Heath Emergencies programme (WHE) has identified opportunities to improve the management of information during the lifecycle of a public health event. The project, called Emergency Management and Response System (EMRS) aims at upgrading and integrating WHE's current systems to create a seamless, rapid and actionable information flow across all actors throughout the full emergency management cycle. To allow the system to evolve, be adapted and distributed outside of WHO, the system will use a modular architecture and to respond appropriately to the needs around usability and flexibility, the project bet on an agile approach focused on continuous learning.
SITAware - a public health event management system for Nigeria
James Elston, Consultant Epidemiologist, Public Health England
SITAware is the public health event management system of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). It is a web-based, simple, user friendly, lightweight solution developed at low cost to record and share information on events in real time. The system is a product of a programme of partnership working between NCDC and Public Health England (PHE).