Effectiveness of National Biosurveillance Systems: BioWatch and the Public Health System
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) and National Research Council (NRC) will evaluate the effectiveness of BioWatch, including a comparison of benefits and costs for Generations 2 and 3; the costs and benefits of an enhanced national surveillance system that relies on US hospitals and the US public health system will also be assessed, and its effectiveness compared to that of the current BioWatch approach. The evaluation will include examination of the reliability of BioWatch monitoring data and the ability of hospitals and public health officials to respond based on information received from that system. Services under this contract will encompass the evaluation of the effectiveness of both current and enhanced biosurveillance systems to detect biological terrorism or other biothreats to human health, including - differing technological generations of BioWatch,
- current human health-related surveillance systems, including those for zoonotic disease, and
- describing necessary enhancements to hospital and public health systems based on measures of effectiveness in detecting attacks of bioterrorism or other biothreats.
Measures of effectiveness will include the ability of surveillance systems to warn sufficiently to provide effective post-exposure prophylaxis and effective post-infection treatment to affected populations following a bioterrorist attack or other biothreat event.
Scientific Milestones for the Development of a Gene-Sequence-Based Classification System for Oversight of Select Agents
NIH has requested the National Research Council to convene an ad hoc committee to identify the scientific advances that would be necessary to permit serious consideration of developing and implementing an oversight system for select agents that is based on predicted features and properties encoded by nucleic acids rather than a relatively static list of specific agents and taxonomic definitions. The committee is asked to address several questions:
- What would be the key scientific attributes of a predictive oversight system?
- What are the challenges in attempting to predict biological characteristics from sequence?
- Does the current state of the science of predicting function from sequence support a predictive oversight system at this time?
- If not, what are the scientific milestones that would need to be realized before a predictive oversight system might be feasible?
- In qualitative terms, what level of certainty would be needed about the ability to predict biological characteristics from sequence data in order to have confidence in a predictive oversight system?
- In what time frame might these milestones be realized? What kinds of studies are needed to achieve these milestones?
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