Roundtable on Bioterrorism Detection

TLDR

The 2001 AMIA Annual Symposium hosted a Roundtable on Bioterrorism Detection focused on public health surveillance systems that repurpose clinical, laboratory, paramedical, and pharmacy data for early bioterrorism event detection. The paper aims to combine case reports of six existing bioterrorism detection systems with a discussion of common techniques, sharing system details, lessons learned, and exploring cooperative projects to advance the field. The roundtable convened 64 participants who discussed and shared information on existing surveillance systems, lessons learned, and potential cooperative projects, including software and data sharing. A mailing list server for ongoing efforts is available at http://bt.cirg.washington.edu.

Abstract

Abstract During the 2001 AMIA Annual Symposium, the Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Emergency Medicine Working Group hosted the Roundtable on Bioterrorism Detection. Sixty-four people attended the roundtable discussion, during which several researchers discussed public health surveillance systems designed to enhance early detection of bioterrorism events. These systems make secondary use of existing clinical, laboratory, paramedical, and pharmacy data or facilitate electronic case reporting by clinicians. This paper combines case reports of six existing systems with discussion of some common techniques and approaches. The purpose of the roundtable discussion was to foster communication among researchers and promote progress by 1) sharing information about systems, including origins, current capabilities, stages of deployment, and architectures; 2) sharing lessons learned during the development and implementation of systems; and 3) exploring cooperation projects, including the sharing of software and data. A mailing list server for these ongoing efforts may be found at http://bt.cirg.washington.edu.