The global infectious diseases epidemic information monitoring system: Development and usability study of an effective tool for travel health management in China

Abstract

Background: Obtaining comprehensive epidemic information for specific global infectious diseases is crucial to travel health. However, different infectious disease information websites may have different purposes, which may lead to misunderstanding by travelers and travel health staff when making accurate epidemic control and management decisions. Objective: The objective of this study was to develop a Global Infectious Diseases Epidemic Information Monitoring System (GIDEIMS) in order to provide comprehensive and timely global epidemic information. Methods: Distributed web crawler and cloud agent acceleration technologies were used to automatically collect epidemic information about more than 200 infectious diseases from 26 established epidemic websites and Baidu News. Natural language processing and in-depth learning technologies have been utilized to intelligently process epidemic information collected in 28 languages. Currently, the GIDEIMS presents world epidemic information using a geographical map, including date, disease name, reported cases in different countries, and the epidemic situation in China. In order to make a practical assessment of the GIDEIMS, we compared infectious disease data collected from the GIDEIMS and other websites on July 16, 2019. Results: Compared with the Global Incident Map and Outbreak News Today, the GIDEIMS provided more comprehensive information on human infectious diseases. The GIDEIMS is currently used in the Health Quarantine Department of Shenzhen Customs District (Shenzhen, China) and was recommended to the Health Quarantine Administrative Department of the General Administration of Customs (China) and travel health–related departments. Conclusions: The GIDEIMS is one of the most intelligent tools that contributes to safeguarding the health of travelers, controlling infectious disease epidemics, and effectively managing public health in China.