Members of the W3C Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLS IG) have published a variety of genomic and drugrelated datasets as Resource Description Framework (RDF) triples. This experience has helped the interest group define a general data workflow for mapping health care and life science (HCLS) data to RDF and linking it with other Linked Data sources. This paper presents the workf...

Individuals can increasingly collect data about their habits, routines, and environment using ubiquitous technologies. Running specialized software, personal devices such as phones and tablets can capture and transmit users' location, images, motion, and text input. The data collected by these devices are both personal (identifying of an individual), and participatory (accessible by that indivi...

Forty years ago is not ancient history in the medical field. However, being an eye witness to the emergence of three new infectious diseases in the northeastern United States in the 1970s left a deep impression on this author. I will relate a small portion of the amazing events that caught the attention of the medical establishment and the general public in a roughly 5-year period of medical di...

BACKGROUND Controlling the pandemic spread of newly emerging diseases requires rapid, targeted allocation of limited resources among nations. Critical, early control steps would be greatly enhanced if the key risk factors can be identified that accurately predict early disease spread immediately after emergence. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Here, we examine the role of travel, trade, and na...

Effective biosecurity is necessary to protect nations and their citizens from a variety of threats, including emerging infectious diseases, agricultural or environmental pests and pathogens, and illegal wildlife trade. The physical pathways by which these threats are transported internationally, predominantly shipping and air traffic, have undergone significant growth and changes in spatial dis...

Recent epidemics and pandemics have highlighted a number of ethical concerns about the response to the increasing threat of emerging infectious diseases. Some of these ethical concerns are very fundamental. They include why a pandemic was declared, how much clinical information can be collected for public health without threatening patient confidentiality and how to ensure fairness in the distr...

1 Scientific Institute of Public Health, Directorate Public Health and Surveillance, Brussels, Belgium 2 KU Leuven, UZ Gasthuisberg, Department of Medical Diagnostic Sciences, Laboratory of Medical Microbiology, Leuven, Belgium 3 Scientific Institute of Public Health, Directorate Communicable and Infectious Diseases, Brussels, Belgium [email protected] Influenza surveillance in children:...

The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System (AFHSC-GEIS) has the mission of performing surveillance for emerging infectious diseases that could affect the United States (U.S.) military. This mission is accomplished by orchestrating a global portfolio of surveillance projects, capacity-building efforts, outbreak investigations and trai...

The session focused upon several issues raised by Mr Anand Sinha in the context of both advanced and emerging market economies (EMEs). Keeping in view, broader interlinkages between the financial sector and the real sector, the need for better coordination between financial regulation and macroeconomic policies for sustaining growth was emphasized. Given the nature and origin of the recent cris...

While newly available electronic transmission methods can increase timeliness and completeness of infectious disease reports, limitations of this technology may unintentionally compromise detection of, and response to, bioterrorism and other outbreaks. We reviewed implementation experiences for five electronic laboratory systems and identified problems with data transmission, sensitivity, speci...