The European Commisssion has launched MediSys, a web-based news outlet providing information on public health threats in European health authorities.
MediSys, has been created to provide EC health providers with real time information about disease outbreaks, industrial accidents, and major incidents that could pose a national health threat. It is also available to the public.
The system will use predefined keywords and combinations to collect and sort information from over 1000 news and 120 public health websites, available in all 32 EC languages.
The aim of the service is to help ensure that all EC nations are aware of incidents as early as possible and can react to the threats quickly.
It was used successfully during the UK’s ongoing foot and mouth disease outbreaks, with registered health officials receiving automatic alert e-mails and SMS text messages as soon as the outbreak was confirmed.
The system works by crawling through the web and sorting information into three primary categories – diseases, bioterrorism and other threats.
These are then classified into more precise categories, and stored on the website and dependent on the level of retrieved hits and detected keywords, it can be sent out by e-mail and SMS like the foot and mouth outbreak was.
MediSys also uses an automatic incident detection system developed by the University of Helsinki, which analyses English reports and extracts data on the number of cases, the location and the date.
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