GPHIN: a word with the man running it

Regular readers of this blog are already familiar with GPHIN, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network run by the Canadian government's Health agency to electronically monitor infectious diseases outbreaks and which helped detecting SARS in time for the world to respond. I wrote about it when Larry Brilliant made it the subject of his speech at the TED conference last February, and then again in an analysis in March, completed with several updates.

I guess it was apparent from these posts that I consider GPHIN a formidable instrument, and a possible model for other global advanced alert systems. So I was happy to get a chance to meet with Dr. Ron St. John, the director-general of the Center for emergency preparedness and response at the Public Health Agency of Canada in Ottawa. GPHIN - run by a team of 12 people with a current budget of about 1.5 million dollars - is part of his Center.

Dr. St. John pointed out that I got something wrong: I wrote that GPHIN is "basically a sophisticated search engine ... designed to crawl the network, filter the information for relevancy and patterns, detect early signs of a potential problem and flag them". That's how I had understood it. But GPHIN in its current incarnation is not a search engine: it's a 24/7 filtering software that scans some 20'000 sources of information in eight languages, most of them raw newswires and local newspaper reports coming in from all over the world.

As said, GPHIN gave an essential contribution in the early detection of SARS and other epidemics (see examples in the post from March) and has been more recently applied to avian flu, but has mostly remained an obscure operation known only by public health insiders. Then Larry Brilliant mentioned it at TED2006 as the model upon which to build an Internet-based global early warning system in the form, this time, of a specialized search engine. Brilliant is the head of Google.org, the nonprofit/forprofit philanthropic arm of Google. That has attracted attention, but also created some confusion: While Brilliant is pushing for developing GPHIN, that's not a Google.org project. When Brilliant gave that speech he was accepting the TEDPRIZE, and was basically asking the people gathered at the conference (including myself; we call ourselves TEDsters) to help in making his vision happen. Several dozen companies and organizations have pledged support.

I asked Ron St John a few questions:

What is the current status of GPHIN? To what is it been applied?

The current GPHIN system that was launched in 2004 has multi-lingual capacity. It is able to monitor and gather relevant information about potential public health threats in eight languages: Arabic, Chinese (simplified and traditional), English, Farsi, French, Spanish and Russian. The non-English articles are “gisted” into English and vice versa using the system’s unique machine translation engine. The purpose of the gist is to provide the user with the essence of what the article is reporting about. The system is comprised of two components: an automated and a human analysis component. The primary function of the automated component is to process the large volume of relevant information in a timely and efficient manner in order for the team of analysts to review the information for situations that may have serious public health consequences or trends.

What can GPHIN currently do other than flag important information or unusual patterns related to diseases or pharmaceutical problems?

GPHIN’s current capacity was built around the timely dissemination of relevant information to its users. The disseminated information covers a broad scope of public health issues such as animal and human infectious diseases; non-communicable diseases; plant diseases; chemical, radio-nuclear or biological incidents; product safety; food security and safety; and natural and environmental disasters. During a public health emergency, the GPHIN team of analysts provide status reports on the magnitude and the geographical distribution of the incident; the contro and prevention measures that are being considered or have been implemented and any other pertinent information.

What are the current options for developing GPHIN?

To date, the GPHIN system has been enhanced and developed through a Collaborative Research Agreement with Nstein Technologies Inc, a Montreal based company that specializes in content management software based on linguistic artificial intelligence. The ability to continue to enhance the GPHIN system as needed is contingent on the availability of funding.  Presently, funding for any enhancements or further developments to the GPHIN system is from users of the GPHIN system.

Long-term objectives also include adding analytical capacity to the system (to offer better context). Dr. St John said the he "personally endorses" Brilliant's vision to expand GPHIN, but added that so far discussions have been "conceptual only".

Comments

[Maryam Ahmed]

Hi Bruno,

I just came across your article and I realize this comment is probably almost four months too late but have you received any updates on the status of the project?

Being a software engineer I was interested on how people not working in the public health sector can help out. Can GPHIN become Open Source? Maybe the 'search engine' aspect can be developed separately through an open source project where technical professionals can contribute to improving its functionality on almost no additional funding. Please let me know if you can find out if there's any way for someone like me to get involved, I wasn't able to find anything on Google when I searched for it.

Thanks!

[BrunoG]

Hell Maryam,
yes, there have been updates on the status of the project (codename INSTEDD), you find them all here:
http://www.lunchoverip.com/2006/03/can_the_interne.html
As you will see by reading that (the updates are appended at the end of the post), there isn't much action with GPHIN: Larry Brilliant has decided to go another route to build INSTEDD and as Ron St John says at the end of this post, there haven't been many contacts between the two groups. Your idea about opensourcing it is a good one, but apparently not the one chosen: Brilliant is the head of Google.org and he can draw on the Google resources and others for the tech; he is also well-known in disaster preparedness and response circles and can draw on resources there, too. I'm following the developments of this and I will keep posting updates and list them under that main post. Thank you, B-

[Rudi Nowak MD, MPH]

Hi Bruno,

I have been following your recent blogs with considerable interest. I am a public health physician and co-founder of the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) who developed and lunched the first prototype for Health Canada in 1999. Subsequently GPHIN system has been integrated into the World Health Organization (WHO) operations since the year 2000. Dr. Larry Brilliant from Google.org has the right vision for future public health early warning system/network serving the global community. I agree that the new web-based system not only has to be timely and efficient with the latest information management technology tools and human skills for data collection and analysis but also has to be open, free and transparent. In addition access to the designated web page/blog should be available to anyone from anywhere to post relevant information on future outbreaks and other significant public health events. The new system should serve not only health officials but it also should contribute to the greater public good. Finally the new system has to develop its own credibility and recognition based on sources and methods and that will take time. As far as I can see we do not have such system for global public health today and it is yet to be developed combining all the attributes mentioned before. It may be a challenge but it can be done in the right and supportive environment as it was done 10 years ago with the GPHIN system.

Best regards

Rudi