Government Technology
Government Technology: State & Local Government News Articles

EU Medical Intelligence System Will Help Identify Public Health Threats



Print
Comment

Aug 17, 2007, News Report

The European Commission has developed a medical intelligence system that constantly collects and sorts information from more than 1,000 news and 120 public health Web sites in 32 languages. Complementing traditional approaches, the system, called MediSys, will provide health authorities with real-time knowledge about disease outbreaks or industrial accidents, thereby helping to identify such incidents as early as possible and so react in a timely way. It can also provide invaluable information to authorities tackling a major incident such as a bio-terrorist attack.

Traditional surveillance systems monitor death rates, the utilization of health services (e.g. emergency room admissions, drug prescriptions), abnormal patterns, changing laboratory characteristics and exposure to risks related to the environment, food or animals. Yet, certain public or animal health threats may go unnoticed but can be reported in the local press or by other less-known sources. The challenge is how to find them.

Using pre-defined keywords and combinations, MediSys crawls through the Web and sorts information into three primary categories: "Diseases," "Bioterrorism," and "Other Threats." Articles or "hits" are then classified in more precise categories such as "AIDS-HIV," "Respiratory infections," "Avian flu," "Legionella," "Anthrax," or "Nuclear safety." Statistics are stored on the filtered categories and "breaking news" is detected in a given category. Based on the level of new articles retrieved and the detected keywords, an automatic alert can then be sent by e-mail and SMS to decision-makers who are on permanent standby. For example, in the recent case of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK, MediSys detected a sudden jump in news reports and automatically sent e-mail and SMS alerts to Public Health officials across Europe.

Working with the University of Helsinki, an automatic incident detection system has also been put in place. This analyzes English reports and extracts structured data on the number of cases, the location and the date. This then feeds an automatic incident database used by the member states and the European Commission. Citizens can also have free access to this automatic information-scanning tool, which includes alert statistics, articles in various languages, and e-mail alerts.

KW

If You Liked This Article, You May Also Like...

Related Products and Services


Latest Government Technology News


Industry Solutions for Government

Read real world deployments of technology in government from our sponsors.

View All Industry Solutions

Marketplace


This section
brought to you by:
Ca - Transforming IT Management

Identity and Access Management Survey
Take the survey to:
  • Win 1 of 10 $25 Amazon Gift Cards!
  • Download the Center for Digital Government's: I Am Who I Say I Am whitepaper
Take the Survey Now!

SF Health Plan

  Yes! I would like more information about CA's solutions for Government.

Security Management

The Evolution of Identity and Access Management IAM has become a key tool in the organization’s security and risk management efforts. Many Govt. organizations however, are not realizing the potential of a fully evolved IAM solution. This paper helps them achieve that goal.

How can a comprehensive IAM solution help me reduce security risk and achieve easier compliance? Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions help you manage users and their access to your IT resources while acheving more effective compliance.

IT Governance

IT Governance: Making the Difference in Cities, Counties and States Project and portfolio management helps government respond to old and new challenges. Featuring case studies from California Department of Agriculture, New York City, and Oakland County, Michigan.

CA Information Governance Solution Brief The CA Information Governance solution helps you solve an array of challenges with unique offerings including federated records management, email management, retention management and business process automation.

Enterprise Management

IT Network Management: State and Local Governments Face New Challenges Network and voice management tools help agancies get optimum performance from today's increasingly complex networks.

Success Stories: San Francisco Health Plan San Francisco Health Plan helps more people access affordable healthcare by simplifying IT management

Success Stories: Social Services Agency, County of Santa Clara County of Santa Clara improves the quality of social services with simplified IT management

CA Network & Voice Management Solution Brief Integrated, fault and performance management for end-to-end service assurance of multi-vendor, multi-technology converged networks.

Risk Compliance and Best Practices

Key Trends in the IAM Market and how CA's R12 Suite Addresses these Trends Identity and Access Management (IAM) has been a major force in the enterprise IT marketplace for years now.This paper will address the question: What's driving interest in IAM solutions?

Network and VoiceManagement for Evolving Business IT management specialist CA provides a foundation for delivering the value of unified network and voice management

A Vision for Dynamic Business Service Management By applying new levels of consolidation, automation and insight, dynamic Business Svc Mgt delivers improved service levels and cost controls

Deploying the CMDB for Change & Configuration Management The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) plays a critical role within the ITIL framework.

The Changing Face of Network Management Automated NCCM tools reduce the downtime and degradation caused by configuration changes.