Real-time Analysis of Public health Integrated Data

ongoing

Access to real-time surveillance data for infectious diseases is essential to respond quickly to cross-border threats to public health. The project’s principal aim is to develop an Disease Control Platform (DCP) at the Public Health Agency of Sweden (PHAS) and integrate existing surveillance systems like the national whole genome sequence analytical platform GENSAM and other internal applications within this target architecture, thus enabling RAPID: “Real-time Analysis of Public health Integrated Data”. During the project, the platform will expand functionality for a national-regional laboratory data capture system and contain tools for analysing disease cases in real-time. This development will profoundly impact the PHAS’s ability to take measures in infection control and enable the rapid sharing of data to ECDC and other member countries during outbreaks or when a cross-border threat to public health from infectious diseases arises. The specific training aims of this project, performed with the Swedish Veterinary Agency (SVA), will lay the foundation for the work of a new generation of epidemiologists and regional health officers trained to analyse real-time data within the DCP. By enabling training within the project, this capacity will be transferred to relevant parties within the disease control sphere through scenarios involving Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza with zoonotic potential and disease Y. During the project, investigations will be conducted into the legal and technical ramifications of enabling data integration and rapid access and sharing of data to relevant user groups. The DCP will significantly increase the effectiveness of existing surveillance programmes and allow new scenarios in a multitier and multistakeholder context. In addition, this project will substantially develop the PHAS’s and the SVA’s capabilities to coordinate and work on surveillance, infectious disease cases, and related data analysis – nationally and across borders.