Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2014 Jan;20(1):17-21.
doi: 10.1111/1469-0691.12477.

Web-based participatory surveillance of infectious diseases: the Influenzanet participatory surveillance experience

D Paolotti  1 , A Carnahan, V Colizza, K Eames, J Edmunds, G Gomes, C Koppeschaar, M Rehn, R Smallenburg, C Turbelin, S Van Noort, A Vespignani
Affiliations
Review

Web-based participatory surveillance of infectious diseases: the Influenzanet participatory surveillance experience

D Paolotti et al. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2014 Jan.

Abstract

To overcome the limitations of the state-of-the-art influenza surveillance systems in Europe, we established in 2008 a European-wide consortium aimed at introducing an innovative information and communication technology approach for a web-based surveillance system across different European countries, called Influenzanet. The system, based on earlier efforts in The Netherlands and Portugal, works with the participation of the population in each country to collect real-time information on the distribution of influenza-like illness cases through web surveys administered to volunteers reporting their symptoms (or lack of symptoms) every week during the influenza season. Such a large European-wide web-based monitoring infrastructure is intended to rapidly identify public health emergencies, contribute to understanding global trends, inform data-driven forecast models to assess the impact on the population, optimize the allocation of resources, and help in devising mitigation and containment measures. In this article, we describe the scientific and technological issues faced during the development and deployment of a flexible and readily deployable web tool capable of coping with the requirements of different countries for data collection, during either a public health emergency or an ordinary influenza season. Even though the system is based on previous successful experience, the implementation in each new country represented a separate scientific challenge. Only after more than 5 years of development are the existing platforms based on a plug-and-play tool that can be promptly deployed in any country wishing to be part of the Influenzanet network, now composed of The Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, the UK, France, Sweden, Spain, Ireland, and Denmark.

Keywords: Europe; Internet; infectious disease; influenza-like illness; participatory surveillance.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Weekly incidence data (influenza‐like illness cases/100 000) for eight countries from 2003–2004 to 2012–2013. All the curves are rescaled on the maximum. Vertical lines correspond to months from November to May for each year. EISN, European Influenza Surveillance Network; BE, Belgium; NL, The Netherlands; PT, Portugal; IT, Italy; FR, France; SE, Sweden; ES, Spain; UK, United Kingdom.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Visits to general practitioners (GPs) reported by Influenzanet users.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Morens DM, Folkers GK, Fauci AS. The challenge of emerging and re‐emerging infectious diseases. Nature 2004; 430: 242–249. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Marquet RL, Bartelds AIM, van Noort SP et al Internet‐based monitoring of influenza‐like illness (ILI) in the general population of the Netherlands during the 2003–2004 influenza season. BMC Public Health 2006; 6: 242–249. - PMC - PubMed
    1. van Noort SP, Muehlen M, Rebelo de Andrade H, Koppeschaar C, Lima Lourenço JM, Gomes MG. Gripenet: an internet‐based system to monitor influenza‐like illness uniformly across Europe. Euro Surveill 2007; 12: pii=722. - PubMed
    1. Friesema IHM, Koppeschaar CE, Donker GA et al Internet‐based monitoring of influenza‐like illness in the general population: experience of five influenza seasons in the Netherlands. Vaccine 2009; 27: 6353–6357. - PubMed
    1. Tilston NL, Eames KTD, Paolotti D, Ealden T, Edmunds WJ. Internet‐based surveillance of influenza‐like‐illness in the UK during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. BMC Public Health 2010; 10: 650–659. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

-