Evaluation of the EpiCore outbreak verification system.

Area of Science:

• Global health security
• Epidemiology
• Public health surveillance

Background:

• Emerging infectious diseases pose a significant global threat.
• Effective disease surveillance requires timely information and verification.
• Event-based surveillance networks like ProMED rely on rapid data dissemination.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the crowdsourced disease surveillance project, EpiCore.
• To evaluate EpiCore's effectiveness in gathering information on potential disease outbreaks.

Main Methods:

• Recruited and trained volunteer health professionals globally for EpiCore.
• Utilized a secure online platform for volunteers to verify health threat alerts.
• Experts requested information on unverified threats, leveraging local knowledge from volunteers.

Main Results:

• 2068 volunteers from 142 countries trained; 790 responses provided for 759 requests.
• 45% of responses were useful, with most received within hours.
• Led to 194 ProMED posts, verifying 99 outbreaks and reaching over 87,000 subscribers.

Conclusions:

• Health professionals demonstrate a strong willingness to support global health threat verification.
• EpiCore's networked expert platform facilitates rapid outbreak detection and reporting.
• Crowdsourced surveillance enhances the speed and reach of disease outbreak information.