Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Ai Kawazoe
Tsuda College
Tokyo, Japan
CoNTENTS
15.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 292
15.2 Existing Global Health Information Systems: An Overview ........... 295
15.2.1 GPHIN (Public Health Canada) .............................................. 297
15.2.2 Project Argus (Georgetown University) ................................ 298
15.2.3 MedISys (Joint Research Centre, Italy)................................... 298
15.2.4 PULS (Helsinki University) ..................................................... 299
15.2.5 HealthMap (Harvard-MIT)..................................................... 300
15.3 Development of BioCaster ..................................................................... 300
15.3.1 Data Sources............................................................................... 301
15.3.2 Selection and Encoding of Diseases ....................................... 301
15.3.3 Automated Analysis ................................................................. 301
15.3.4 Data Dissemination .................................................................. 304
15.4 Results ...................................................................................................... 305
15.5 Future Work............................................................................................. 307
15.6 Conclusions.............................................................................................. 308
Acknowledgments ............................................................................................. 309
References............................................................................................................ 309
Endnotes ...............................................................................................................311
15.1 Introduction
On April 21, 2009, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
issued a report informing physicians about two cases of swine influenza in
Southern California (Cohen and Enserink 2009; Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention 2009). BioCaster, a publicly available global health surveil-
lance system (GHIS) based in Tokyo, picked this story up on the first day it
was reported in the English-speaking media (Associated Press 2009). Four
days later, with cases of a novel influenza A (H1N1) influenza centered on
Mexico, Southern California, and Texas, the World Health Organization
(WHO) convened its first Emergency Committee and declared a public
health emergency of international concern.
With on ly a few confirmed cases, nat ional and i nter nat ional agencies st rug-
gled to analyze the virus and accumulate enough data to assess the transmis-
sibility and virulence of the new virus, as well as the population groups at
risk. Meanwhile, media coverage and public concern increased with reports
of exported cases in Canada, several European Union countries, and New
Zealand (Figure 15.1). By April 29, the WHO had confirmed 148 officially
