Using Digital Surveillance Tools for Near Real-Time Mapping of the Risk of International Infectious Disease Spread: Ebola as a Case Study

Sangeeta Bhatia; Britta Lassmann; Emily Cohn; Malwina Carrion; Moritz U.G. Kraemer; Mark Herringer; John Brownstein; Larry Madoff; Anne Cori; Pierre Nouvellet

The systematic collection, storage, organization and communication of disease surveillance data were especially challenging during the West African Ebola epidemic as the deficiencies in transportation and communication resources, surveillance data quality and management, human resources and management structures posed unique challenges in this context [31] . The collection of case incidence data and rapid dissemination through digital surveillance systems was further hampered by the limited information technology and internet service in the countries most affected. Thus, for the West African Ebola epidemic, ProMED and HealthMap data were available at a coarse spatial scale with the sub-national level information for cases missing in most of the records. This limited our analysis to the spread of the outbreak across national borders only, although in principle our model could 11 deal with data at any spatial scale. Both ProMED and HealthMap collect more granular data for most outbreaks. Utilizing these data to investigate outbreaks and regions would provide further evidence of the ability of digital surveillance data to usefully complement data collected from traditional surveillance. Another interesting research avenue would be to explore ways of integrating timely data from ProMED and HealthMap with delayed data from ground surveillance to generate timely insights into the spatial spread of an outbreak.