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Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS)
Zero Impact from Health Threats
Vision
A world where health threats are identified and responded to so early and rapidly that they have zero impact on lives and livelihoods
Mission
To save lives and minimise the impact of threats to health, societies and economies through collaborative, authoritative and timely public health intelligence allowing for rapid, evidence-based action
About EIOS
The Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) initiative is a unique collaboration between various public health stakeholders around the globe. Joint under a common vision, it brings together new and existing initiatives, networks and systems to strengthen public health intelligence (PHI) by creating a unified all-hazards, One Health approach to early detection, verification, assessment and communication of public health threats using publicly available information. EIOS responds to the need for a strong global PHI community that is supported by robust, harmonised and standardised PHI systems and frameworks across organisations and jurisdictions. To this aim, the initiative is governed by multiple stakeholders and led by WHO under the Health Emergencies Programme (WHE).
EIOS is built on three pillars: a growing global community of practice, a range of multi-disciplinary collaborators and an evolving fit-for-purpose system. The global community, including Member States, international and regional organisations, expert networks, research institutes and other collaborators, is at the heart of the initiative; saving lives through early detection of threats and rapid intervention is its ultimate goal.
The community of practice is supported by an evolving EIOS system, which not only connects other systems and actors – including ProMED, HealthMap and the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) – but also promotes and catalyses new and innovative collaborative development. The system builds on a long-standing collaboration between WHO and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC).
The WHO Pandemic Hub
Since January 2022, the lead of the EIOS initiative is hosted within the new WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. As one of the Hub’s flagship initiatives, EIOS supports its overall mission to facilitate the global collaboration of partners from multiple sectors, supporting countries and other stakeholders to address future pandemic and epidemic risks with better access to data, better analytical capacities, and better tools and insights for decision-making. With support from the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany, the WHO Pandemic Hub was established in September 2021 in Berlin, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which demonstrated weaknesses around the world in how countries detect, monitor and manage public health threats.
Developing solutions
The Pandemic Hub News Map is one example
of an application that has been developed with colleagues at the JRC to
visualise information coming through the EIOS system. The News Map displays the
headlines and snippets of the ten most recent articles the system has
identified as being related to a number of selected
as well as trending health topics in their original languages.
The Initiative
In an increasingly connected world, threats to public health have the potential to quickly spread from local to national, regional and international levels, affecting global health security faster than ever before. The EIOS initiative aims to mitigate and, ideally, prevent public health emergencies by connecting experts around the world and providing them with the best possible solutions to detect, contextualise, analyse, assess and share information for quick, evidence-based action. As such, the EIOS initiative is by and for experts across national and international organisations, networks and government entities engaged in emergency preparedness and response.
By consolidating a wide range of efforts and platforms, the EIOS initiative is building on a growing global community of practice, a range of multi-disciplinary collaborators and an evolving fit-for-purpose system, jointly working towards the EIOS vision of a world where health threats are identified and responded to so early and rapidly that they have zero impact on lives and livelihoods.
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EIOS Global Technical Meeting
The annual EIOS Global Technical Meeting, or “GTM” in short, is organized by the EIOS Core Team and the key event for the EIOS community. In the spirit of the initiative, understanding itself as a global collaborative of multi-disciplinary experts, the meeting aims to bring these experts together once a year to further strengthen existing networks, build new alliances as well as to discuss topical challenges, solutions and innovations in the field of Public Health Intelligence (PHI). The GTM was first organized as a technical forum in 2018, just over a year after the initiative was born. With the start of expansion to Member States at the end of 2019, the GTM not only expanded in scope but also changed its ambition, replacing the rather technical character of the original event (as reflected in its name to date) with “community building and strengthening” as its primary objectives. At the second GTM in November 2019, participant numbers had already doubled with the event convening more than 100 experts from across 40 countries in Seoul, Republic of Korea. After a hiatus in 2020 due to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the 2021 GTM was organized as a successful virtual event attracting close to 400 online participants. In November 2022, the GTM was convened as an in-person conference again, bringing together more than 180 experts in Luxor, Egypt, to jointly discuss "The dawn of a new era for Public Health Intelligence."
Visit the EIOS GTM 2022 page for more information.
EIOS Newsletters
All →
1 April 2023
EIOS Newsletter April 2023
The April 2023 edition features news related to EIOS implementation across all six WHO Regions. It introduces the new EIOS Coordination Group, which will...
1 January 2023
EIOS Newsletter January 2023
The January editions are traditionally devoted to reflections on the past year where we highlight its milestones and celebrate our joint achievements....
1 October 2022
EIOS Newsletter October 2022
The October 2022 edition provides an overview of the 2022 Training of Trainers workshop and various EIOS and EBS trainings held across the globe, including...
1 May 2022
EIOS Newsletter May 2022
The May edition's Spotlight focuses on the first "EIOS Expo" that gathered hundreds of health intelligence professionals from across Brazil to share their...
Publications
All →Publications included in this section showcase articles describing practical use cases of the EIOS initiative or in which the EIOS system is analysed, evaluated, or compared to other public health intelligence systems. The EIOS Core Team makes no claims or guarantees about the completeness, accuracy, content or quality of information contained.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to generate automated early warnings in epidemic surveillance by harnessing vast open-source data with minimal...
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic event has shown how communicable diseases can spread faster and further than ever before because of globalisation....
Epidemic intelligence activities are undertaken by the WHO Regional Office for Africa to support member states in early detection and response to outbreaks...
Testimonials
Thanks to this, information retrieved via the EIOS system is now responsible for roughly 10 to 15% of all submitted official reports of exceptional animal health events.
Before using the EIOS system, we used to spend hours on the internet, manually searching targeted sites and pages of articles. Now I can access all the latest publications and media articles with the click of a button.
EIOS has been a fantastic tool that allowed us to quickly investigate further some of the factors driving changes in COVID-19 trends worldwide.
We are getting the information back into the hands of the people that need it.