Kyrgyzstan’s new integrated digital surveillance system (iEPID) tracks the epidemiological situation in the country and facilitates a quick and effective response to emerging public health events, including outbreaks of infectious diseases.
Developed with technical support from WHO, iEPID allows the Department of Disease Prevention and State Sanitary and Epidemiological Surveillance to monitor the spread of diseases across districts. The system provides real-time information on numbers of cases and other critical factors, and is currently being used to monitor and respond to outbreaks of measles, meningitis and COVID-19 in the country.
“Previously, information on various cases of infectious diseases was collected randomly through telephone and email, which could lead to delays and incorrect assessment of risks,” highlighted Dr Bakyt Dzhangaziev, Deputy Minister of Health. “To minimize the impact of the human factor, iEPID is integrated with other health-care information systems. Data are automatically transferred to the system once the epidemiological threshold is passed and an alert is created.”
Saving lives and saving time
iEPID has preset epidemiological thresholds for various diseases and automatically analyses information from different systems. When the number of cases exceeds a set threshold, the system generates an alert that requires further validation and risk assessment. The information system also makes it possible to significantly reduce levels of paperwork and cancel a number of forms, including reporting forms and information logs.
Dr Shahin Huseynov, WHO Special Representative of the WHO Regional Director in Kyrgyzstan, explained, “Digital surveillance systems, such as this one, help public health professionals save time and, as a result, save lives. We are proud to help the Ministry of Health by assisting in developing this software to help in the fight against COVID-19 and other outbreaks of infectious diseases. This technical assistance is just one of many examples of our partnership in the field of public health, and WHO will continue its assistance to the Kyrgyz Republic.”
The system was developed together with the Department of Disease Prevention and State Sanitary and Epidemiological Surveillance and the E-Health Centre of the Ministry of Health of Kyrgyzstan as part of the implementation of the Sanarip MED digital health initiative.
Source: WHO
