Led by the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2017, Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) aims to bring together “new and existing initiatives, networks and systems to create a unified all-hazards, One Health approach to early detection, verification and assessment of public health risks and threats using open source information.”

EIOS harnesses new technologies and capitalizes on open source information by consolidating multiple platforms into a single web-based system capable of screening, sorting and categorizing hundreds of thousands of articles and reports each day, streamlining information sharing and facilitating collaboration across a multidisciplinary global network of experts.

To build the EIOS network of experts and provide an opportunity for the global public health intelligence community to share experiences and lessons learned around event-based surveillance and early detection, the EIOS Core Team held the 2019 EIOS Global Technical Meeting in Seoul, Republic of Korea, from November 12-14, 2019.

Dr. Angela Hilmers, Senior Associate Director for Science at TEPHINET, participated in the meeting, which convened more than 100 participants from nearly 40 countries. Participants represented WHO headquarters and regional and country offices, other United Nations (UN) agencies (such as the Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] and UNICEF), ministries of health, national public health institutes and public health agencies, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations like TEPHINET, and other partners such as Ending Pandemics.

During a programmatic session on “Building Public Health Intelligence Capacity,” Hilmers gave a presentation on TEPHINET’s initiatives to enhance global preparedness and response through the establishment of global learning technical guidelines to modernize field epidemiology training program (FETP) curricula and opportunities for continuous education for FETP alumni.

“TEPHINET is proud to be part of the unique collaboration that is EIOS,” says Hilmers. “We look forward to working with this global community to strengthen our collective efforts to detect health threats as early as possible and reduce their impact.”