Digital Biosurveillance Preparedness

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that access to data in the Department of Defense (DoD) is a major roadblock to current and future ability to react in a timely fashion to public health emergencies. Future pandemic preparedness will be enhanced by a comprehensive enterprise data platform with advanced analytics capabilities that can be leveraged for biosurveillance. To accomplish this, authoritative data sources and unified business logic need to be identified and agreed upon across the enterprise in the earliest stages. There must be a shared understanding of when and how PHI and PII can be leveraged under HIPAA to enable public health activities and essential government functions, while respecting individual privacy and legal privacy protections. Finally, preparedness for future pandemics will require a combination of traditional epidemiology skills and the application of predictive analytics and machine learning techniques to lead towards an AI-enabled public health future.