The protection of the public's health is one of the most important aims of European countries. In the last decade, many efforts have been made to develop national and international systems for surveillance, anticipation and prediction of threats to public health, utilizing different tools for monitoring, data sharing and modeling. However, the overall technological design of systems that will be able to generate timely alerts and prediction of health threats, and the way to construct them, need still more development.
Investigation of aspects related to ICT research in new risk prediction, assessment and management tools for preparation, surveillance, support and intervention in case of largescale adverse health events was one of the main objectives of the European Commission, through the ICT e-health programme, when launching the GAP (Guard Anticipation & Prediction ) Project.
The GAP Project involves three major steps: Mapping "state of the art" technologies, outlining a generic ICT predictive model, and proposing a roadmap for the research needed to implement it.
The mapping exercise evidenced, among other findings, that there are significant differences between countries for both the processes and the information systems that they use to anticipate health threats; that most of the existing systems focus on surveillance and early detection rather than prediction; and, also, that systems are fragmented and do not function as an integrated structure.
The proposed generic model outlines the characteristics, from the technical and organizational point of view, of a future paneuropean structure, based on interoperability among the actual systems, serving as a tool for management and decision-making at the prediction level.
Currently, the GAP consortium, with the help of key experts, is finalizing the road map that includes the identified key ICT research activities proposed , in order to allow the development of future interoperable prediction systems.
For further information, please visit:
http://www.gaptheproject.eu/
Related article:
- FP7 Projects: GAP