Evolve: InSTEDD's Global Early Warning and Response SystemTaha Kass-Hout, MD, MS, Nicolás di Tada, and Eric Rasmussen, MD, MDM, FACP

InSTEDD, Palo Alto, California, USA

With funding from:

We describe an early warning and response system designed to streamline the collaboration between domain experts and automated processes for early detection, prediction and effective response to health-related events (such as a disease outbreak or pandemic).

Related items are grouped into a thread. Threads are later associated with events (hypothesized or confirmed).

Tag (user- or auto-generated) cloud and semantic heat map

Expert-generated Tags

Publish and share information

Create filter (by keyword, tag, topic,

location, or time) and subscription

(email, RSS, GeoChat)

An event is monitored through a thread of items

Evolve synthesizes health-related event indication from a wide variety of information sources (event- or indicator-based) into a consolidated picture for analysis, maintenance of “community-wide coherence”, and collaboration. This helps detect anomalies, visualize clusters of potential events, predict the rate and spread of a disease outbreak and provide decision makers with the necessary tools to effectively investigate and respond to the event. Current classification includes:

•7 syndromes•10 transmission modes•> 100 infectious diseases•> 180 micro-organisms•> 140 symptoms•> 50 chemicals

Presently, Evolve is being piloted in the Mekong Basin region of Southeast Asia.

Tracking the recent Avian Influenza Outbreak in Egypt

(reports started to appear late January 2009). Notice the

pattern of reported incidents along the Nile river.

Objective Results

"EXTREMELY AFFORDABLE HEALTH INNOVATIONS“, A Grameen Health initiative in collaboration with World Health Care Congress