Integrated approach for enhancing foodborne outbreak surveillance

Foodborne diseases affect millions of Americans, causing illness and deaths that are often preventable through early detection and response. Public Health continually requires advancing technologies in surveillance for improved timeliness and accuracy in detection and response to threats to human health. An integrated approach spanning the food ecosystem is required. We will design & initiate innovate supplements to the existing foodborne disease information system to enable timely/real-time detection and analysis of foodborne disease outbreak information. The approach realizes the importance of surveillance, early detection and tracking of disease outbreak patterns at the production and food product levels coupled with clinical/laboratory sources of surveillance to continuously monitor emerging threats of disease. Northrop Grumman has been developing disease surveillance solutions, including multiple foodborne disease related systems that strengthen the effectiveness of public health programs at all levels. An integrated and flexible tool set is required to meet this the farm-to-plate progression, and to monitor appropriately. Our approach provides multi-domain data collection, alytics for rapid detection and tracking of early disease patterns, and community level nontraditional information from social media. . We utilize our extensive knowledge in that domain to ensure delivery of the required information and tools to manage/visualize data for monitoring and reporting functions.