West Nile Virus and Botulism portal: A case study in infectious disease informatics

Abstract

Information technologies and infectious disease informatics are playing an increasingly important role in preventing, detecting, and managing infectious disease outbreaks. This paper presents a collaborative infectious disease informatics project called the WNV-BOT Portal system. This Portal system provides integrated, Web-enabled access to a variety of distributed data sources related to West Nile Virus and Botulism. It also makes available a preliminary set of data analysis and visualization tools tailored for these two diseases. This system has helped to demonstrate the technological feasibility of developing a cross jurisdiction and cross species infectious disease information infrastructure and identify related technical and policy-related challenges with its national implementation. © Springer-Verlag Benin Heidelberg 2004.