Ebola Innovation for Impact - 2015 Data Strengthening, Situational Awareness & Coordination Working Group Sessions

1:00-5:00 pm, July 8, 2015

Manhattan Room, One UN Plaza, Second Floor

44^th St. and 1^st Ave., New York City

Agenda

On Wednesday July 8, 2015, an afternoon session will address Ebola response & recovery data strengthening, situational awareness, and coordination.  This working session will be held at U.N. headquarters in New York or a facility nearby from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM.

Following are the proposed elements of the July 8 afternoon session:

1:00 PM           40 mins                        Opening Plenary Session

            An Overview of West Africa’s Current & Emerging Infrastructures

                        Barbara Bentein           UNICEF

                        Juliet Benford               Anthrologica

                        Sara Glass                   USAID, Global Development Lab

1:40 PM           60 mins                        Breakout Working Groups

            AS IS Communication, Computing, Data Management Systems and Current Gaps

2:40 PM           30 mins                        Report Outs by the AS IS System Working Groups on Current Gaps

3:10 PM           60 mins                        Breakout Working Groups

            TO BE Requirements and Solutions to Current Gaps for the Medical and Public Health        
            Information Sharing Environments and Resilience Systems in West Africa

4:10 PM           30 mins                        Report Outs on TO BE Requirements 

4:40 PM           20 mins            Closing Session led by David Nabarro, UN Special Envoy on Ebola

5:00 PM                                   Adjourn

The July 8 session is being organized by Global Health Response & Resilience Alliance (GHRRA), the Global Digital Health Initiative (GDHI), and the Ebola Private Sector Mobilization Group (EPSMG), in cooperation with Global Ebola Response Coalition (GERC), UNICEF, and other UN Partners

Working Groups

Below is a list of the proposed breakout working groups within the July 8 working sessions.

            Group 1: Computing Infrastructure & Communication Networks

                                    (e.g., cellular, satellite, mesh, radio) 

            Group 2: Existing Datasets, Software Platforms, & Data Management Systems

            Group 3: Management and Governance

                                    International Open Data and Open System Standards 

                                    Compliance with National Plans 

                                    Unity of Effort

                                    Common Core Datasets & Supplemental Datasets

                                    Privacy, Intellectual Property, and Security

            Group 4: Medical and Public Health Information Sharing Environments

                                    Health Information Systems

                                    Clinical Record Systems 

                                    Lab Systems

                                    Pharmacy Systems

                                    Epidemiology

                                    Operational Biosurveillance

                                    Epidemic Response

                                    Logistics and Supply Chain Management

            Group 5: Community Engagement 

                                    Benchmarks & Assessing Mission Critical Functions in Communities

                                    Crowd-sourcing Systems

                                    Resilience Networks

                                    Resilience Capacity Zones

                                    Resilience Systems

            Group 6: Sense-making and Situational Awareness

                                    GIS & Geospatial Intelligence

                                    Advanced Analytics, Simulation, and Forecasting

                                    Network Science

                                    Supercomputing

                                    Strategic Decision-making 

Breakout groups are forming now online, which will manage the continuing discussions on the topics above after the 7/8 sessions.  Following the Data Strengthening, Situational Awareness, and Coordination meeting, working group deliberations will begin online, leading up to meetings in the West African region during July.  The collective data shared by the participants will be made available to them online through the West Africa MPHISE (Medical and Public Health Information Sharing Environment) for their own and collective analytical purposes.

Findings from the July 8 working sessions will be reported in the Ebola Innovation for Impact luncheon on July 10 in UNHQ Conference Room 3.  These initial findings will help kick start a six-month process of West Africa’s ICT infrastructure environmental scan, gap analysis, requirements development, and rapid prototyping followed by six months of systems development, piloting, and implementation.

ICT Infrastructure Survey

The West Africa ICT infrastructure survey is being provided to all GERC members and relevant actors.  The “ICT” Survey can be filled out at:

            http://westafrica.mphise.resiliencesystem.org/ict

This survey gathers data for an initial environmental scan of the tools, methods, standards, and systems that are currently being used in the Ebola response and recovery efforts.  In addition, questions are asked about the gaps GERC members see in the current collective GERC enterprise, along with what they are willing to do to improve data sharing, knowledge management, coordination, and situational awareness. 

Associated Activities to July 8 Data Strengthening, Situational Awareness, & Coordination Meeting

On July 7, UNICEF will be holding meetings on community engagement with country leads.  An initial review of current “As Is” computing, communication, and data management resources will be discussed in a side session during the UN Secretary General’s Ebola Recovery Conference on July 8 in the Manhattan Room on the second floor of One UN Plaza (44^th St and 1^st Ave) in New York City.  In addition, working groups will discuss requirements for establishing persistent West Africa Medical and Public Health Information Sharing Environments (West Africa MPHISE) and Resilience Systems with nested sub-systems down to the community level. 

Proposed partnerships in this open West Africa MPHISE and Resilience Systems will be discussed on July 9 in the Patron’s Lounge of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  July 9^th discussions will include plans for a Global Health Alliance late July delegation to West Africa to meet with UNICEF and government leads. Part of the discussion will include the development of a much improved analytical and sense-making process to address mission critical functions in Ebola response and recovery in 1,000 Resilience Capacity Zones in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea through a civil society-driven public / private consortium utilizing crowd-sourcing, intelligent social networks, network science, and supercomputing for improving unity of effort in the West Africa region.  The findings from the July 8 working sessions will be reported out in the July 10 Ebola Innovation for Impact 2015 luncheon.

Emerging Systems and their Capabilities

Many of the institutions focused on preserving and improving health and human security under increasingly complex operating environments are achieving a new type of unity of effort to face the emerging challenges of the early to mid-21^st century. A nascent form of this unity of effort has been demonstrated in the Global Ebola Response Coalition (GERC) and the UN Mission on Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) coordination.  As a result, more responsive multi-organizational strategies and solution sets are emerging.  These new strategies are more dependent than ever on data strengthening, information sharing environments, situational awareness and effective coordination to prevent and manage the increasingly frequent and more severe social crises that are emerging, including the increasing likelihood of highly infectious and lethal epidemics, some with pandemic potential.

These particular conditions that are intensifying under rapid global change (including but not limited to climate change) are threatening health and human security in ways that could undermine the significant progress made through the past three decades of the Global Health movement.  There is great promise in new breakthroughs in science and technology to enable humanity to face these challenges.  However, new initiatives must be scaled up quickly to address the rapidly increasing frequency and severity of severe events, and the related negative social and economic cascades associated with them, such as in the Ebola-impacted areas of West Africa. 

New prevention, response and recovery initiatives must also be rapidly customized and localized to the unique social and ecological conditions in every community.  We stand within a watershed moment, where some legacy hierarchical institutions will tend to maintain their historical vested interests in legacy systems, policies and procedures, while new, more effective and responsive approaches to 21^st century challenges will become increasingly more important.  These emerging systems tend to be more cognizant of the social and ecological determinants of health. 

Emerging systems with greatly improved distributed collective intelligence are better organized for prevention, mitigation and rapid response with deep community engagement.  As a result, the emerging systems with advanced ICT are better adapted to improving the health and human security of individuals in stressed environments.  Those using these systems gain a new type of situational awareness that enables them to strengthen the resilience and sustainability of their communities. Increasingly, U.N. agencies, businesses, NGOs, and governments are adopting resilience approaches.

Building Persistent Infrastructure for Disease Response, Community Resilience and Recovery

The GERC has brought significant ICT infrastructure, data management, and other resources into the Ebola-affected countries over the past 12 months.  Before ICT data and infrastructure are lost in these times of reduced Ebola caseloads through the withdrawal of key resources, it is essential that medical and public health information sharing environments are established in a persistent form to assist not only remaining Ebola responses, but also the long road to recovery in West African communities affected directly and indirectly by Ebola.  Given that the risk of Ebola remains from both animal and human reservoirs in the region, community resistance to Ebola transmission must be maintained, while all community functions critical to reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience are addressed in the region.

The Global Health Response and Resilience Alliance with the Global Digital Health Initiative is collecting and mapping information on computing, communication, and data management resources in the West Africa region.  The West Africa ICT survey < http://westafrica.mphise.resiliencesystem.org/ict > provides GERC members with the beginnings of an advancing open knowledge base from which to identify key ICT gaps in the current “As Is” infrastructures essential to Ebola response and recovery.  With a clear understanding of these gaps emerging from meetings at the UN and throughout the West African region in July 2015, solutions to resolving current gaps will be built into a persistent West Africa medical and public health information sharing environment and its related Resilience Systems, Resilience Networks, and Resilience Capacity Zones.

If you have any comments or questions on the July 8 working sessions, please contact me at ***@***.*** or calling me at 202-468-7899.  

Mike

Michael D. McDonald, Dr.P.H. 

Coordinator

Global Health Response and Resilience Alliance

Cell: 202-468-7899

***@***.***