PANDEM-Source, a tool to collect or generate surveillance indicators for pandemic management: A use case with COVID-19 data

Introduction
PANDEM-Source (PS) is a tool to collect and integrate openly available public health related data
from heterogeneous data sources to support infectious diseases surveillance for pandemic
management. The tool may be used also for pandemic preparedness by collecting or generating
surveillance data for training purposes. It was developed as part of the EU funded Horizon 2020
PANDEM-2 project during the COVID-19 pandemic as result of a close collaboration in a
consortium of nineteen partners including six European public health agencies, one hospital, and
three first responders organisations.

Methods
A requirement gathering process with EU pandemic managers in the consortium was performed with
the objective of identifying and prioritising a list of variables and indicators useful for surveillance
and pandemic management. Using COVID-19 pandemic as a use case, we developed PS, a tool to
map, collect, and integrate data used for surveillance from different data sources with the purpose of
feeding all necessary data to be displayed in the PANDEM-2 dashboard.

Results
PS routinely monitors, collects, and standardises data from from open or restricted heterogeneous
data sources (users can upload their own data). It supports traditional surveillance indicators and
health resources reported by national and international agencies, and non-traditional surveillance
indicators such as those captured in social and mass media, participatory surveillance and
sero-prevalence studies. The tool can also calculate indicators and be used to produce data for
training purposes by generating synthetic data from a minimal set of indicators to simulate pandemicscenarios. PS is currently set up for COVID-19 surveillance at European level but can be adapted to
other diseases or threats and regions.

Conclusion
PS design provides flexibility to collect heterogeneous data from open data sources or to upload end
users' own data and customise surveillance indicators. These features are supplemented by the ability
to generate realistic epidemiological synthetic datasets that can be used for training purposes. All
these features make PS a unique and valuable tool for pandemic management.
With the lessons learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to keep building capacity to
monitor potential threats and develop tools that can facilitate training all the necessary aspects to
manage future pandemics. The open source availability of PS1 and the supporting documentation to
facilitate easy adaptation to future threats or different training scenarios may represent a cost efficient
impact tool for pandemic management.