Introducing! The EBOLA APP! Open Source by the CDC

Tinder Meets Ebola: Creepy App Gives You Real-Time Distance From Nearest Sufferer
[link to www.ibtimes.co.uk]

CDC Disease Detectives Using New Software Tool in Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever Outbreak
[link to www.cdc.gov]

For the first time, Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreak disease detectives are using a new software tool to help find people exposed to the deadly virus faster.

The new tool developed at CDC, an Epi Info viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) application, speeds up one of the most difficult parts of disease detection: finding everyone that was exposed to, and possibly infected by, someone with a contagious disease. This task, called contact tracing, is an essential step in breaking the chain of disease transmission and ending an outbreak. In addition to facilitating contact tracing, the tool assists with the collection and management of epidemiologic, clinical, and laboratory information for every case. This data is crucial for developing outbreak countermeasures.

The Epi Info VHF tool is specifically designed for outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, Marburg, Rift Valley, Lassa, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fevers. The open-source program runs on the Epi Info software platform that CDC has made freely available since the 1990s. It features virus transmission diagrams that help field workers visualize outbreak spread between people and automated tools that speed contact tracing and data analysis.

"With a disease as often fatal as Ebola, quickly identifying and following up with those who may have been exposed is key to saving lives and containing the outbreak," said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. "Epi Info, the ‘Swiss Army knife’ of field-deployed epidemiologists, can now help to track disease more quickly."

Letter of Interest Due: Epi Info 7 Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF) Outbreak Management App Train-the-Trainer Workshop
[link to nacchopreparedness.org]

The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) is partnering with CDC to offer an “Epi Info 7 Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF) Outbreak Management App Train-the-Trainer Workshop” in Atlanta December 10-11, 2014. The Epi Info VHF app is designed to provide case management, contact tracing, analysis, and reporting services during outbreaks of Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers. The workshop will prepare participants to use the VHF app as well as tools to provide training and technical assistance to colleagues.

This workshop is intended for individuals that already have experience with Epi Info 7 and are interested in gaining skills to provide Epi Info VHF app training and technical assistance to others at their health departments. Prerequisites for the workshop include:

1. Completion of an Epi Info 7 Intro Course
or
2. 1 year of experience using Epi Info 7

CSTE is sponsoring travel for up to 30 participants for this workshop. Please distribute and/or recommend potential candidates in your agency who may be interested in this opportunity to send a letter of interest (not to exceed 1 page) by Friday, November 14 to Amanda Masters at [email protected].

Interested candidates should indicate the following in their letter of interest:

How they meet the prerequisites listed above. Please include the date and title of the Epi Info course(s) and experience with Epi Info 7
Description of how they anticipate using this workshop to provide training at their health departments

What Data Can Do to Stop Pandemics
[link to www.nextgov.com]

Using maps, algorithms, mobile applications, websites, sensors and electronic health records, authorities are assembling and analyzing pools of data from across the world to understand the patterns and predict where the disease will strike next.

While both nations and agencies struggle to control and mitigate the outbreak, there have been small measures of success to report.
A recently deployed mapping application released by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency allows relief agencies, disease specialists and governments to access information on Ebola outbreaks, medical treatment centers, electrical grids, water supplies and other infrastructure that must be in place to contain the spread of the virus.

- See more at: [link to www.nextgov.com]

This is a real government department? Wow

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency creates website to support Ebola relief efforts
[link to www1.nga.mil (secure)]

To help combat the spread of the Ebola virus disease, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is providing unprecedented online access to its unclassified geospatial intelligence products to lead federal agencies and their partners through a public-facing website dedicated to the crisis.

“This has the potential of being a global incident,” said Tim Peplaw, GEOINT mission manager for NGA’s Integrated Working Group - Readiness, Response and Recovery, or IWG-R3, which provides GEOINT support to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief activities.

NGA’s role in the Ebola crisis has been in step with many other global events that have required the agency’s disaster support, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Haiti earthquake in 2010, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, said Peplaw. The difference this time is the size of the affected area.

“We are looking at multiple locations and we are trying to provide support,” said Peplaw. “It’s not single-threaded. It’s not just one event taking place, it’s happening on the entire western part of the continent.”

The combined size of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone is 165,625 square miles, or roughly three times the size of Louisiana and 15 times the size of Haiti. Other countries like Nigeria, which has been minimally affected, or other neighboring countries, may be at risk in the future, adding to the scope of the problem.

A crisis this large requires an international response of a similar size, said Martin Cox, national geospatial-intelligence officer for Africa and NGA issues manager for the Ebola crisis. So NGA is focused on unclassified support – making its products available through a public-facing portal no caveats or limits in distribution.

“If we don’t keep it unclassified, the majority of the people who are working in the field will not be able to access the information that they may need to help bring this epidemic to a close,” said Cox, who added that infection rates in West Africa are predicted to grow at an exponential rate.

The large number of non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, involved in the relief effort requires NGA take a different approach to disseminating information, said Peplaw. “We want to get this stuff into the hands of NGOs as quickly as possible.”

To accomplish this, NGA’s created an unclassified public-facing website to support relief efforts. The dynamic site, which uses Esri’s ArcGIS Platform hosted in the cloud by Amazon Web Services – both publically available services – features various base maps that provide foundational context for users, who will then have the ability to visually overlay public NGA data, as well as ingest open-source data. NGA’s data will provide logistical information relevant to the situation on the ground, said Steven Alness, deputy director of the Office of Future Xperience for NGA’s Xperience Directorate.

“As we expose the data, we want it to be used, useful and usable,” said Alness.

NGA’s first exposure of data includes geospatial layers relevant to the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, including cultural places and structures, and communication, electric power and ground transportation infrastructure.

“For example, you will be able to see Ebola cases by province and locations of emergency treatment units,” said an IWG-R3 analyst. “Users will be able to ascertain the distance from a certain airfield to the closest emergency treatment unit.”

Traditionally, NGA provided relief workers with static products, or “snapshots in time,” said the analyst.
“Those are disposable bits of information,” the analyst said. “We are providing information in a dynamic manner which is continually updated as new information comes in.”

This mindset is in line with NGA’s focus on putting its knowledge directly into the hands of the user, said Cox. Doing it at a completely unclassified level, however, is uncharted territory.

“The level at which we are trying to expose our data and commercial imagery products is unprecedented,” said Cox. “If they are trying to do good, why would we not want to help?”

U.S. Military EBOLA tracking MAP!!!

[link to nga.maps.arcgis.com (secure)]

So kinda like a reverse Foursquare then?

the 1-star bandit strikes again!