JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The proliferation of digital disease-detection systems has led to the increase in earlier warning signals, which subsequently have resulted in swifter responses to emerging threats. Such systems can also generate false alarms and potentially propagate rumors.

Objective:

This paper describes the potential of crowdsourcing information through EpiCore, an online disease surveillance platform, to facilitate the verification of early warning signals of potential outbreaks and support the monitoring and risk assessment of ongoing threats.

Methods:

This paper uses summary statistics and illustrated use cases to describe EpiCore, an effort that crowdsources information for epidemic and pandemic intelligence from around the world to accelerate the time to verification.

Results:

Since its launch in 2016, EpiCore membership grew to over 3,300 individuals during the first two years, consisting of experts in human, animal, and environmental health, spanning 161 countries. The overall EpiCore response rate to requests for information increased by year between 2017 and 2022 from 65.4% to 68.8% with an initial response typically received within 24 hours (in 2022, 94% of responded requests received a first contribution within 24 hours). Timely details from members provided information to facilitate the verification of early warning signals of potential outbreaks and for the monitoring and risk assessment of ongoing threats.

Conclusions:

EpiCore is a complementary verification tool that may support health authorities for decision making to be used in conjunction with official verification systems. EpiCore can reduce the noise around signals emitted from early warning tools and leads to reducing the time to verification by confirming early detection signals, informing risk-assessment activities, and monitoring ongoing events.