Docs Using Net as Disease Detector

by Robert Cribb 5:02am  6.Apr.98.PDT

http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/11466.html

The Canadian government is developing a system to monitor the
Internet -- often abuzz with newbies passing on warnings about bogus
computer viruses -- for clues to potential real-life disease
outbreaks.

The health surveillance system will become the World Health
Organizations key defense against deadly epidemics, plagues, and
natural disasters when it is launched in May, said Dr. Rudi Nowak,
director of the early-warning project for Health Canada, the countrys
federal health department.

"The critical element [for infectious disease outbreaks] is time," he
said. "We want to narrow the window of time between when [an
outbreak] happens and when people get that information. The sooner
it's picked up, the sooner governments and agencies can get an
outbreak under control. The Internet helps us do that."

The technology will collect a wide variety of data from around the
world, detect the impact of health risks, and make the information
available instantly online.

The system will use search-engine technology designed by
Ontario-based Open Text Corp. to continuously scan the Web, news
wires, public health email systems, and even local online newspapers
around the world looking for information on various infectious
diseases.

"Our spider technology can crawl a million [Web] pages a day, index
the information and make it available for searching so it's the most
up to date on the Web," said Abe Kleinberg, senior vice president of
marketing for Open Text. "And you can train it to crawl particular
sites with certain characteristics."

So unlike general search engines that cast their nets far and wide,
this system will be highly discerning. It will provide only the most
current public health information from reliable sources, Nowak said.

"We're fine-tuning the system so that we weed out sources that arent
providing us good information," he said. "Out of the mass of
information, the system will siphon out what's meaningful, extract
the intelligence, make sure the information is properly validated and
shared with (public health) experts here and at WHO."

When an urgent alarm is sounded by the system, the information will
be transmitted simultaneously to scientists at Health Canada in
Ottawa and the Geneva-based World Health Organization, which works
with governments to identify global health risks and co-ordinates
international responses. The international health agency already has
a low-tech global monitoring system in place that relies on workers
in various regions around the world to report any communicable
disease threats.

But the phone and fax communication system has proven slow and
ineffective, said Nowak. "The system now operates in a passive mode
because someone has to send a fax or call when something is
happening. And with different time zones and communication problems,
that sometimes doesnt happen very well."

For example, it took months before the global community learned of
outbreaks such as Indias plague in 1994 and Zaires Ebola tragedy a
year later. Although the first report of avian flu in Hong Kong was
filed last May, the investigation dragged on for several months.
Since many infectious diseases such as influenza and Ebola can kill
within days or weeks, those delays can be deadly, said Nowak.

Dr. Stephen Corber, a Washington, DC-based disease-prevention expert
with the global agency, said the Canadian system will not only get
disease reports out faster -- it could also help publicize outbreaks
that are buried by local government officials afraid of scaring off
tourism dollars.

"We always have to go with the authority of the local health
department when we release outbreak warnings," he said. "But when the
information is coming from outside the country, it is harder [for
local government officials] to say there isn't a problem. If it
publicized that a country has an outbreak on the Internet, whether
its confirmed or not, people wont visit. So that creates a new
pressure for countries to respond."

Over the past two decades alone, at least 29 new infectious diseases
have emerged worldwide, including HIV, Ebola fever, and Legionnaires
disease. Meanwhile, older diseases such as tuberculosis, dengue
fever, and diphtheria have returned with new potency.

And the potential for epidemics to spread is also increasing along
with the rapidly deteriorating state of water and sanitation services
in overcrowded cities and a dramatic increase in international
travel, which allows diseases to spread across borders and oceans in
a matter of hours.

"We can contract a disease abroad and bring it back to expose friends
and family overnight," said Nowak. "This system will attempt to find
that information and get it to the public in a systematic, continuous
way that's never been done before."

Links:

World Health Organization home page URL: http://www.who.ch/

Welcome To Open Text Corporation URL: http://www.opentext.com/