Surveillance system driven by Big data and AI
The accuracy and timeliness of surveillance can be improved by electronic systems and internet connectivity which could benefit the reach, visualization, and analysis of various data
Muyang Yan
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, responsible for more than one million deaths in EU countries, ‘convinced us of the necessity of ensuring that real capacity is available in the EU to detect possible new variants sufficiently early as well as to monitor them,’ the ECDC director said. The struggle is constantly starting over, with the continuous emergence of new mutants/variants such as alpha, beta, gamma, omicron and so on. Traditional surveillance is based on case reports. Syndrome-based surveillance systems actively use data from emergency departments, intensive care units and hospital admissions. Event-based internet surveillance systems are expected to be deployed on a large scale, because effective surveillance will have to use multiple data collected and integrated from several sources. This new approach requires integrating multiple technologies and data resources from various fields including social media, laboratory detection, outpatient or emergency treatment, diagnosis, over-the counter drug sales, insurance claims and even absenteeism.
‘The accuracy and timeliness of surveillance can be improved by electronic systems and internet connectivity which could benefit the reach, visualization, and analysis of various data,’ said Muyang Yan from the First Medical Center of PLA General Hospital in Beijing, China. The Covid-19 pandemic significantly accelerated the application of big data in emerging infectious diseases surveillance in order to sooner detect, better predict and better control infectious diseases in the EU and elsewhere.
Source: Healthcare in Europe
