EHealth 2011, Málaga, 21-23 November 20111 Event-based surveillance with MedISys Tracking Media...

eHealth 2011, Málaga, 21-23 November 2011 1

Event-based surveillance with MedISys

Tracking Media Reports on the Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak in Germany

4th ICST International Conference on eHealth21-23 November 2011

Málaga, Spain

Erik van der Goot & the OPTIMA team (OPensource Text Information Mining and Analysis )

European Commission – Joint Research Centre (JRC)Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC)

[email protected]


Joint Research Centre (JRC)

The European Commission’s

Research-Based Policy Support Organisation

IPSC - Institute for the Protection and Security of the CitizenIspra - Italy

http://ipsc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

http://www.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

JRC - who


JRC - where


MedISys - Overview

Objective:Provide open source data collection and analysis for surveillance and epidemiology Replace manual scanning of multiple newspapers and web portals Support national and international Public Health organisations to monitor issues of Public

Health concern (infectious diseases, CBRN threats, food & feed contaminations)

Functionality:Gather, filter, classify, extract and aggregate health-related informationMonitor trends, detect breaking newsVisualise analysis resultsAlert usersAllows customised viewsIn combination with NewsDesk tool, allows manual moderation.


Background - History

Based on JRC’s Europe Media Monitor (EMM) technology (EMM live since 2002; http://emm.newsbrief.eu).

On request / initiative of the EC’s Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection (DG SANCO).

Password-protected service for Public Health bodies since 2005.

Public service since early 2007 (http://medisys.newsbrief.eu, restricted functionality).


EMM/MediSys System Overview

EMM Open Source Monitoring Engine

EMM Newsbrief

NewsDesk Service (a.k.a. RNS)Editorial InterfaceMediSys Newsbrief


MediSys Today

Some statistics

Gathers approximately 100,000 new news articles per dayIn >42 languagesFrom ~ 3100 news portals world-wide (roughly 6500 pages/RSS feeds), plus 20 news wires and

370 specialist sites

Classifies all news according to hundreds of subjects and countries.(~1400 category definitions, ~50.000 key word patterns and pattern combinations)24 / 7: Runs 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.

Started in 200290.000 hits per day for public MediSysBut more importantly, 4500 visitors/day on the public site

Developed, built, maintained and run by the JRC.


Locations mentioned in MedISys medical articles across languages

Italian - German

Importance of multilingual information gathering

English - French

Spanish - Portuguese


Taken from:Paquet, C., Coulombier, D., Kaiser, R., Ciotti, M.Epidemic intelligence: a new framework for strengthening disease surveillance in Europe. Euro Surveill. 11, 665 (2006).http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=665

Event-based surveillance & Epidemic intelligence


Number of articles in the E. coli category per day (data from 1 May to 4 July 2011; all languages).

E. coli outbreak in May 2011


Timeline of early events

•19 May: Robert-Koch-Institute was informed about a cluster of three cases of HUS in Hamburg.• 21 May: MedISys detected the first media report in the newspaper Die Welt on Saturday 21 May at 12:14 CEST• Several other articles followed the developing story in the afternoon. • Altogether, 23 German news items triggered the MedISys E. coli category, of which 22 were about the outbreak (one irrelevant article was about the water quality in German lakes in the region Oberbergischer Kreis). • Furthermore, there were two news reports in Farsi and one report in Mandarin; these reports were from the science pages of Iranian and Chinese newspapers and were not related to the outbreak.• Due to the sudden increase in media reports on E.coli on Saturday,MedISys issued an automatic alert.• 22 May: The Early Warning and Response System (EWRS) of the EU received a first communication by the German authorities on Sunday 22 May at 11:40.


Number of articles in the E. coli category published in:Luxembourg (LU), Sweden (SE), France (FR), Russia (RU), Spain (ES) and Germany (DE)

Country of publication


Main events

• sudden rise on articles in Germany (21-25 May), when the first cases became public,

• a peak with articles on a Swedish tourist group who got infected in Lower Saxony (26 May).

• the reporting on alleged E. coli contaminations in Spanish cucumber, tomatoes and salad (peak on 27 May with 107 articles),• the reporting on the financial impact on Spanish farmers and the announcement that Spanish cucumbers had tested negative for E. coli (peak on 31 May with 300 articles),• the discussion on trade restrictions in Russia for EU vegetable products

(peak on 2 June), • the announcements by German authorities that bean sprouts were the

source of infection (rise in volume on 5-10 June), • the E.coli cluster of cases in Bordeaux, France (peak on 16 June with 203

articles), and• the reporting on fenugreek seeds imported from Egypt in 2009 and 2010

(from end of June on).


Number of articles in the E.coli category that also mention one of the entities Robert Koch Institute, Commissioner John Dalli, European Commission, ECDC and EFSA.

Entity extraction


Conclusions: E.coli outbreak in May 2011

Early media reports on the E.coli outbreak in May 2011 were identified quickly and accurately; an alert was published on Saturday 21st of May via MedISys.

Media monitoring was used to identify key aspects of the developing story which were further disseminated, e.g. in reports for the European Commission.

Since MedISys covers both general media and official sites, users were able to analyze their reports in parallel.


NewsDesk Screenshot

Feeds(in a directory)

Articles(in a feed)

Newsletter


MedISys – Current subscribers and users include …

Supranational organisationsDirectorate General Health and Consumer Protection (SANCO)European Centre for Disease Control, Stockholm (ECDC)European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)World Health Organisation (WHO)

National Public Health organisationsEU27 public health authorities & ministries of healthGlobal Public Health Intelligence Network (Canada)National Institute of Infectious diseases (Japan)

The (general?) publicCurrently ~ 5000 visitors, ~ 100000 hits per day on public system

You?

http://medisys.newsbrief.eu

EHealth 2011, Málaga, 21-23 November 20111 Event-based surveillance with MedISys Tracking Media...

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