Novel Influenza A(H1N1) Media Tags

Tag --Select-- 1st case 1st cases 2009 H1N1 A H1N1 ALERT Abroad Annual Assembly Argentina Asia Australia Avian Bird flu Birds Britain CDC Confirmation Contracts Coughs Diarrhea ECDC Epidemiology Fatigue Finland H1N1 H3N2 Hawaii Infections Kobae Malaysia Masks Mexican Mexico Michigan Military Nausea Netherlands Norway Origin Pandemic Peru Philippines Pneumonia Pork Respiratory disease Response SOIV School Solidarity South Korea Spain Student Surveillance Tamiflu Thailand Thermal scanners Tourist Turkey United States Vaccine Vomiting WHO aches and pains action additional additional cases adult adults adverse reactions affected areas aggressive action aggressively agricultural airport airports alarmed america analyzed animal strain antiinfluenza antiviral antivirals avian flu beijing belgium bird body ache body aches body temperature brazil british california campaign canada child children chile chills china chronic disease clerk closed schools closure college students colleges colleges closure community outbreak community spread complications concern confiirmed confirm confirmed confirms contact contacts control measures cough coughing crew crewman critical condition critically ill cuba culled dangerous dangerous strain dead dead bird deadly death deaths decline declining diagnosed diagnostic diagnostic test diagonosed died difficulty in breathing disinfected distributed domestic domestic cases domestic infection domestic outbreak domestic transmission drug drugs economic damage economic impact economy emergency emergency response ending epicenter epicentre epidemic etiquette europe exposed fall falling family members fatal fatality fear fears fever feverish fevers first first case first cases first death first fatality first serious case fist case flear flight flights flu flu cases flu drug flu like illness flu like symptoms flu like virus flu shots flu strain flu stricken areas flu surveillance flu symptoms flu virus foreign country france full epidemic full scale genetic blueprint germany grace period growing epidemic guidance headache health emergency healthy healthy adults high fever high risk high school high school students high temperature high transmission higher highest hong kong hospitalization hospitalizations hospitalized hot line hotline human human case human cases human error human flu human infection human infections human swine influenza human to human human virus hygiene ill ill equipped illness illnesses immigration checkpoints imminent imported increase increased increases india infected influenza influenza 2009 influenza A influenza B influenza like illness influenza like symptoms inspecting intensifies interim interim guidance international flight investigates investigating investigation iowa isolate isolated isolation israel italy japan jump kids killed kindergartens kindergartens closure kobe laboratory level 5 light symptoms local cases local railway worker map mask matches migratory birds mild mild strain monitoring more case more cases multi strain muscle aches mutated mutating mutation natural history new case new cases new flu new flu strain new flu virus new influenza new influenza virus new strain new virus new york new zealand newly confirmed north america not controlled not unusual pattern novel flu novel influenza novel virus observation outbreak oversea oversea outbreak panama pandemic potential passangers passengers patients person to person pig pigs pneumonia like symptoms porcine portugal possible possible cases possible mutation possible ommunity level outbreaks potential precaution precautions pregnant preliminary prepandemic preparedness prevent preventative measures preventive measures probable probable case professor protect public health emergency public heatlh emergency quarantine quarantined quarantines raise rapid rapid measures reassorting recommendations recovered recovering reduce resistant respiratory congestion respiratory failure respiratory illnes respiratory illness respiratory symptoms respiratory virus responding returned returning rise risen rises risk ruled out same flights school closure schools schools closed screening searching season seasonal seasonal flu seasonal influenza self monitored serious seriously ill severe severe cases severe flu severe illness severe pneumonia severe respiratory illness severity sibling sick sickened sickness side effects similar sneeze sneezes sneezing soared soars sore throat sore throats spread spreading spreads stable stockpile students studing suspected suspects suspend classes suspends schools suspicious suspicious symptoms sweden swine swine flu swine influenza swine origin swines switzerland symptoms teacher teachers temperature scanners texas thermal scanning threat toddler toronto tourism trace tracked down travel travel restriction traveled travelers traveling travelled travellers travelling trip trips uk uncertainty underlying conditions united unusual strain unusually update updated updates upward trend us usa vacation vaccination vaccines vaccines development ventilator victim virulent visit visited visitors warning wash wash hands widespread wild birds woman young young adult young adults young children

Riff: A Social Network and Collaborative Platform for Public Health Disease Surveillance

From back of the napkin concept, to initial prototype and production, and finally to implementation, here is the story of Riff...
 

View more presentations from Taha Kass-Hout, MD, MS.

2009, AMIA Spring Congress

Last week, I presented Evolve; InSTEDD's Global Early Warning and Response System, at the 2009, American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Spring Congress. The conference took place at the Walt Disney World Swan, May 28th–30th, in Orlando, Florida, USA. Here is the presentation:

View more OpenOffice presentations from Taha Kass-hout.

Related Links:

• Influenza A(H1N1) Media Hype: Mid-March 2009 thru May 19, 2009
  
• Tracking A(H1N1) using Evolve
  
• Low volume Evolve announcements on Twitter
• Extremely Affordable Health Innovations
  
• MBDS ICT and Technology Forum
  
• Best Poster Award for Improving Public Health Investigation and Response at the Seventh Annual International Society for Disease Surveillance Conference
• Collaborative Analytics and Environment for Linking Early Event Detection to an Effective Response

Influenza A(H1N1) Media Hype: Mid-March 2009 thru May 19, 2009

Data source: A(H1N1) Evolve Collaborative Workspace

Note: Tag cloud was created on Many Eyes © IBM

Note: Tag cloud was created on Many Eyes © IBM

Note: Map was created on Many Eyes © IBM

Related Links:

• Tracking A(H1N1) using Evolve
  
• Low volume Evolve announcements on Twitter
• Extremely Affordable Health Innovations
  
• MBDS ICT and Technology Forum
  
• Best Poster Award for Improving Public Health Investigation and Response at the Seventh Annual International Society for Disease Surveillance Conference
• Collaborative Analytics and Environment for Linking Early Event Detection to an Effective Response

Tracking A(H1N1) using Riff

Last week, InSTEDD's CEO; Dr. Eric Rasmussen, blogged about the Riff workspace we stood up earlier to further aid experts and responders collaborating around emerging reports related to the 2009 A(H1N1) pandemic influenza. To-date, there's been massive news coverage around the event, but in order to make sense of it all, a group of experts (with a backgrounds in public health, international relations, diplomacy, social work, and emergency response) volunteered their time to collaborate around the various streams of information (listed below).



One by-product of this ongoing effort is that the information is appropriately tagged and geo-located. The A(H1N1) workspace allows you to subscribe to all the information or to a filter of your own. The tags include information beyond just a disease category, symptom, or syndrome, but we also tried to capture other important information; such as policy issues (e.g., vaccination, school closure, travel advisory, etc.). However, our primary goal is not to become another information source, rather to be able to provide a good situational awareness of the event in order to respond effectively. We are trying to address the following problems that are inherent in the current early detection systems:

• Classic problem: too much data, not enough information. Why aren’t the key indicators noticed earlier?
• Noisy data—low reliability—
• Need to keep the human in the loop (a lot of this is still an art).
• Sources not always obvious - we saw emerging sources of information, like the citizen reporting over a Google map (in the past much attention was paid to sources like Internet search queries (e.g., Eysenbach, Ginsberg, Polgreen, Hulth, and Cooper), over the counter medications sales (e.g., Wagner/RODS Lab), absenteeism (e.g., Wagner/RODS Lab), as opposed to ER chief complaints or routine disease surveillance hierarchical systems).
• Threat profile keeps changing- is not known for something like a SARS/SARI (e.g., Swine Flu or other things like it).
• Political and Organizational Boundaries (Note that we weren't able to perfectly communicate the first indications of SARS, or the outbreaks of H5N1 in China, and we saw that happen again with the H1N1 Swine outbreak).
  
• Need to set up the need for shared collaboration spaces and geographic distribution. Not only do we need human experts in the loop, but they need to share the hunches and concerns. Discussion needs to identify communities of interest. Different specialists are involved based on the nature of the threat.

I particularly applaud the effort by HealthMappers (Dr. Brownstein, et al) for quickly putting together an A(H1N1) mashup (or the New England Journal of Medicine HealthMap) which tracks the cases (confirmed, suspect, dead, or ruled out) alongside with the informal sources that HealthMap continuously monitors and moderates. HealthMap and BioCaster also setup moderated tweets on Twitter that are timely, reliable and of high quality.

Information Sources:

1. EISS Weekly Electronic Bulletin
2. Canada - FluWatch
3. USA - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - FluView
   
4. Health Information for International Travel The Yellow Book
5. Moreover Public Health News
6. BBC Outbreak News
7. WHO Outbreak News
8. CDC Flu Updates
9. WHO Latest news on the avian influenza situation in humans around the world
10. EID Podcasts
11. EID Journal
12. Recent Outbreaks and Incidents
13. CDC Emergency Preparedness & Response
14. Google Outbreak News
15. Flu Stop with CDC
16. ProMED Mail (including ProMED MBDS)
17. FDA Twitter Feed
18. CDC MMWR
19. Eurosurveillance
20. Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity
21. Y! Health Cold & Flu News
22. CNN Health News
23. VitalStats
24. HEDDS Surveillance News
25. CDC en Español
26. Public Health Matters
27. WDIN Disease Map Digest
28. CDC Travel Notices
29. Citizen reporting using Google Map
30. Various Twitter feeds (including HealthMap, BioCaster, EpiSpider, and Veratect)
31. Google Insights for Search
    

The Challenge Ahead:

While all this is important, I'd like to emphasize the fact that the best data is still coming from old-fashioned shoe leather epidemiology. We have to be true to ourselves and remember that, with all the information, new tools, open networks of collaborators, etc., we still missed the early indication(s) of the A(H1N1) outbreak. I remember when I was in the trenches of SARS back in 2003, we didn't have the breadth and depth of the information nor the tools we currently have. This calls for an action to rethink our strategies around early detection especially for emerging infectious diseases...

Related Links:

• Low volume Riff announcements on Twitter
• Extremely Affordable Health Innovations
  
• MBDS ICT and Technology Forum
  
• Best Poster Award for Improving Public Health Investigation and Response at the Seventh Annual International Society for Disease Surveillance Conference
• Collaborative Analytics and Environment for Linking Early Event Detection to an Effective Response
  
  

Using GeoChat during an Avian Influenza Simulation Exercise, Stung Treng Province, Cambodia

On October 13-15, 2008, over 65 people gathered from around Cambodia to participate in a Cambodian CDC-led Avian Influenza (AI) pandemic training and simulation exercise in the Stung Treng province, Cambodia. Cambodia CDC provided the public health training and InSTEDD introduced and tested GeoChat for the first time demonstrating the utility of mobile phones to help with cross-disciplinary and cross-regional pandemic preparedness and response.



Here my After Action Trip Report (a summary is also provided on the InSTEDD site).

AI Simulation Exercise – After Action Report Stung Treng Province, Cambodia, October 13-15, 2008, InSTEDD (Dec.8,2008)

View more documents from Taha Kass-hout.

Related Links:

• What is GeoChat
  
• GeoChat Tool
  
• Your wishes for GeoChat
• Ed on GeoChat
• Taha on GeoChat