TY - GEN
T1 - Using healthmap to analyse middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS) Data
AU - Hossain, Nassif
AU - Househ, Mowafa
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - In this paper, a web-based disease surveillance platform known as HealthMap is used to retrieve and analyze data pertaining to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) within the geographical confinements of the Arab World and North African countries. An account was opened with HealthMap to gain access to data related to MERS for the time-period 9 September 2015 to 7 March 2015. HealthMap accumulates and assesses outbreak data from a range of sources, this includes news media (Google News (Arabic)), validated official alerts (WHO) and expert-curated accounts (ProMED). Search terms "MERS" and "Coronavirus" were used to search HealthMap for relevant alerts pertaining to MERS. The search terms were geographically limited to the Arab World and North African countries. Our results show that the prevalence of MERS still remains to be the highest in Saudi Arabia, however, between 9 September 2015 and 7 March 2015 there has been a slight overall trend in decreasing number of MERS related alerts within Saudi Arabia and the Arab world. All countries other than Saudi Arabia such as, UAE, Tunisia, Qatar, Oman, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt together amounted for only 25.6% (n=214) of total MERS alerts (n=837). Our findings show that the rise in the aggregated contribution of internet based participatory surveillance systems for tracking non-communicable diseases such as MERS has aided in improving the accuracy, sensitivity and timeliness for monitoring disease outbreaks. Use of resources such as HealthMap can aid in the timely assessment of risk factors, vaccination development initiatives, prevention strategies and measured allocation of healthcare resources while running at a low cost with greater flexibility and increased scalability compared to isolated diseases surveillance systems.
AB - In this paper, a web-based disease surveillance platform known as HealthMap is used to retrieve and analyze data pertaining to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) within the geographical confinements of the Arab World and North African countries. An account was opened with HealthMap to gain access to data related to MERS for the time-period 9 September 2015 to 7 March 2015. HealthMap accumulates and assesses outbreak data from a range of sources, this includes news media (Google News (Arabic)), validated official alerts (WHO) and expert-curated accounts (ProMED). Search terms "MERS" and "Coronavirus" were used to search HealthMap for relevant alerts pertaining to MERS. The search terms were geographically limited to the Arab World and North African countries. Our results show that the prevalence of MERS still remains to be the highest in Saudi Arabia, however, between 9 September 2015 and 7 March 2015 there has been a slight overall trend in decreasing number of MERS related alerts within Saudi Arabia and the Arab world. All countries other than Saudi Arabia such as, UAE, Tunisia, Qatar, Oman, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt together amounted for only 25.6% (n=214) of total MERS alerts (n=837). Our findings show that the rise in the aggregated contribution of internet based participatory surveillance systems for tracking non-communicable diseases such as MERS has aided in improving the accuracy, sensitivity and timeliness for monitoring disease outbreaks. Use of resources such as HealthMap can aid in the timely assessment of risk factors, vaccination development initiatives, prevention strategies and measured allocation of healthcare resources while running at a low cost with greater flexibility and increased scalability compared to isolated diseases surveillance systems.
KW - Disease Surveillance
KW - HealthMap
KW - MERS
KW - MERS-CoV.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84978718693&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3233/978-1-61499-664-4-213
DO - 10.3233/978-1-61499-664-4-213
M3 - Conference contribution
C2 - 27350507
AN - SCOPUS:84978718693
T3 - Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
SP - 213
EP - 216
BT - Unifying the Applications and Foundations of Biomedical and Health Informatics
A2 - Mantas, John
A2 - Hasman, Arie
A2 - Gallos, Parisis
A2 - Kolokathi, Aikaterini
A2 - Househ, Mowafa S.
PB - IOS Press BV
T2 - 14th International Conference on Informatics, Management, and Technology in Healthcare, ICIMTH 2016
Y2 - 1 July 2016 through 3 July 2016
ER -