National Support for Project Medical Ecosystem - Personalized Event-based Surveillance |
| Reseach leader: | Smrž Pavel |
| Team leaders: | Zemčík Pavel |
| Agency: | MŠMT |
| Code: | 7E10054 |
| Start: | 2010 |
| End: | 2012 |
| Keywords: | Public Health Event Detection, Personalization, User Generated
Content |
| Annotation: |
Many factors in today's changing societies contribute towards the
continuous emergence of infectious diseases. Demographic change,
globalization, bioterrorism, compounded with the resilient nature of
viruses and diseases such as SARS and avian influenza have raised
awareness for European society's increasing vulnerability. Traditional
Epidemic Intelligence systems are designed to identify potential health
threats, and rely upon data transmissions from laboratories or
hospitals. They can be used to recognise long-term trends, but are
limited in several ways. Threats, such as SARS, can go unrecognised
since the signals indicating its existence may originate from sources
other than the traditional ones. Second, a critical strategy for
circumventing devastating public health events is early detection and
early response. Conflictingly, the time with which information propagates
through the traditional channels, can undermine time-sensitive
strategies. Finally, traditional systems are well suited for
recognising indicators for known diseases, but are not well designed for
detecting those that are emerging. Faced with these limitations,
traditional systems need to be complemented with additional approaches
which are better targeted for the early detection of emerging threats. The
Medical EcoSystem (M-Eco) project, will address these limitations by
using Open Access Media and User Generated Content, as unofficial
information sources for Epidemic Intelligence. This type of content has transformed
the manner in which information propagates across the globe. Based on
this, M-Eco will develop an Event-Based Epidemic Intelligence System
which integrates unofficial and traditional sources for the early detection
of emerging health threats. M-Eco will emphasize adaptivity and
personalized filtering so that relevant signals can be detected for
targeting the needs of public health officials who have to synthesize
facts, assess risks and react to public health threats. |
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