Connecting CHORDS

Last week I had the privilege of attending the Connecting Health Organizations for Regional Disease Surveillance (CHORDS) meeting at the Dead Sea in Jordan.  CHORDS is a program of the NTI/Global Health Security Initiative, that connects regional disease surveillance networks to work together as a community of practice to reduce the threat posed by infectious diseases through enhanced surveillance.  CHORDS was born out of the Bellagio Call to Action, and subsequent advent of the International Health Regulations, which call improved to infectious disease surveillance as a necessary tool to control disease outbreaks in an increasingly globalized world.

The meeting included representatives from the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance (MBDS) network and the Middle East Consortium on Infectious Disease Surveillance (MECIDS), as well as SACIDS, the WHO, Pro-Med and other organizations involved in infectious disease surveillance.  The group came together to in preparatory working session in anticipation of a meeting in March 2010 to lay out a plan to further support implementation of the Bellagio Call to Action.  A key goal of the meeting was to begin a discussion on how CHORDS could work together as a community of practice and draw from one another to improve infectious disease surveillance.

The structure of the meeting included working groups to tackle the specific issues of governance, laboratory and human resources and information and communications technology (ICT).  I had the opportunity to serve as rapporteur for the ICT group, where we discussed a number of the challenges and opportunities that emerging technologies hold for disease surveillance networks.

For example, mobile technology is opening up incredible opportunities for improving disease reporting, as well as connection among health professionals.  Yet, with a myriad of new technologies available, and the accompanying host of pilot projects to test them all individually, there is a risk of creating numerous independent vertical surveillance systems that are not integrated.  Providing a forum where networks can learn from one another about how to strategically choose and implement new technologies for maximum benefit is exactly the type of venue that CHORDS hopes to provide.

Listening to the discussions during the meeting, I was struck by the complexity of not only building an effective infectious disease surveillance system, but building one that is also flexible and responsive.  Disease surveillance systems are designed to be a chain of reporting, and thus by definition are linear and vertical.  Therefore figuring out how to make those systems interactive at the regional and global level so that data can be disseminated and shared quickly requires a great deal of collaboration, ingenuity, and most of all trust between partners to work together and share information.  CHORDS represents an innovative approach to bringing together practitioners from various arenas of health, including both human and animal, to work collaboratively improve global disease surveillance by strengthening regional disease surveillance.

The goal is to take a step towards making the world a healthier place and a safer place where infectious disease outbreaks happen less frequently.  Not bad for a two-day meeting in Jordan.  And getting to float in the Dead Sea?  Well, that was pretty rad too.