Influenzanetdev

Inspiration

Participatory disease surveillance is a surveillance approach relying on the participation of volunteers on the Internet to routinely collect health-related data. We want to build an Open Source Framework empowering public health institutes and medical researchers to connect with the citizens and patients through participatory surveillance.

What it does

The new system is inspired to influenzanet.info, a network of Web platforms in several European countries. Our system collects symptoms data directly from volunteers through surveys on a Web mobile friendly application in an anonymous way. The goal is to collect high resolution, harmonized data across countries that can be readily used for public health purposes in a privacy preserving fashion. Each country can customize the questionnaires as long as a common core for data collection is maintained. The Survey model goes beyond traditional questionnaires, including future concept of abstract Survey Questions reaching out to device sensors, Health-kit or fitness data, on voluntarily basis. Such an effort cannot be carried out with commercial software for survey building.

How I built it

The system is based on Docker containers and a mongoDB setup. We created an ad-hoc engine to create flexible surveys that can be used to create highly sophisticated epidemiological studies. In order to face challenges regarding scalability and sustainability, we designed the system with clear abstraction layers and an open, highly modular approach. Backend software architecture embraces the micro-service pattern, using effective communication interfaces between the services. An open public api is planned that can allow third party apps and websites to embed the services

Challenges I ran into

Independent Technical Framework - many countries have restrictive policies on public cloud, third party services etc.

Legal Framework: how to deploy and ensure conformity to local regulations in a short time.

Design Framework: best practices, how to engage users (different cultural, language background, educational level, age-group)

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We managed to collect Europe-wide data on seasonal influenza from ten countries for more than ten years

What I learned

Engaging users from the general population and retaining them to collect usefult health-data is not a trivial effort!

What's next for Influenzanetdev

Launching the new platform in some countries will follow soon - we are looking for contributors and backers - many technical, design and legal challenges has to be solved to effectively fight this and future pandemics. This hackathon will be useful to have input about solutions for the technical, design and legal aspects in order to scale up the deployment in as many countries as possible.