17 August 2007
The European Commission has developed a new web based medical intelligence system to update health authorities on public health threats.
The new system called MediSys will constantly collect information from over 1,000 news and 120 public health websites in 32 languages. It is designed to provide the European health authorities with real time information about disease outbreaks, industrial accidents, and major incidents such as a bioterrorist attack. Its aim is to help health authorities identify incidents as early as possible and enable them to react quicker.
The system will work in much the same way as crawler based search engines using predefined keywords and combinations. Once the information has been collected it will be sorted into three primary categories: diseases, bioterrorism, and other threats. Data will be extracted on the number of cases, the location, and the date. The information is then fed into an automatic incident database used by member states.
Keep up to date with industry and Nomensa news by signing up to Nomensa newsletters.
