Global disease surveillance platform, and corresponding system and method

An apparatus for managing phases of a public health event and monitoring responses thereto, the apparatus including one or more suitably programmed computing devices, the apparatus comprising:

• a data acquisition device including a crawler operating on a continuous basis to search for data sources including information of public health and bio-terrorism, worldwide, to determine if a public health event exists and to update an existing event, wherein the data acquisition device is configured to use keywords of Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) to search for the data sources worldwide;
• an interface coupled to the data acquisition device and configured by computer-executable instructions to:
• receive structured data from external feeds and unstructured data from the external feeds and the crawler,
• map the structured and unstructured data into a schema consistent with a schema of the apparatus, and
• tag the structured and the unstructured data with meta-data, creates an index of the unstructured data, and relate the index of the meta-data back to the meta data's structured or unstructured data;
• a data store coupled to the interface, wherein the meta-data and the structured and unstructured data are stored in the data store;
• a processing component coupled to the interface, the processing component configured by computer-executable instructions to:
• receive data from the interface, wherein the data include the structured data and the unstructured data;
• analyze the data in relation to one or more thresholds and to trigger transmission of a public health alert by an alert module if a threshold value indicative of a public health event has been exceeded;
• and
• provide real-time user access to the structured and unstructured data, and to the corresponding meta-data for pre-planning, identification, detection, and response to the public health event;
• and
• one or more network devices coupled to the computing devices, wherein the network devices obtain and display views of the public health event and responses.

A method for managing public health events and monitoring responses thereto during an entire life cycle of the event, the method executed on one or more computing devices including at least one processor, the method comprising:

• receiving one or more structured and unstructured data, wherein the structured data is received from external feeds, and the unstructured data is received from the external feeds and a data acquisition device including a crawler that operates on a continuous basis to search for data sources including information of public health and bio-terrorism, worldwide, to determine if a public health event exists and to update an existing event, wherein the crawler uses keywords of Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) to search for the data sources worldwide;
• initially processing the structured and unstructured data, comprising:
• tagging, using the at least one processor, the unstructured data with meta-data;
• indexing, using the at least one processor, the unstructured data;
• and
• storing, using a storage device, the meta-data and their corresponding structured and unstructured data, wherein the meta-data allows retrieval of the corresponding structured and unstructured data;
• analyzing, using the at least one processor, data, which include the structured and unstructured data, to determine if a threshold value indicative of a public health event has been exceeded, wherein if the threshold has been exceeded,
• providing an initial public health event alert, and
• continuing, using the at least one processor and the storage device, to collect, process, and analyze the data to allow management of the response;
• and
• obtaining and displaying views of the public health events and the responses via one or more network devices coupled to the one or more computing devices.