PANDEM Work Approach
PANDEM has brought a highly skilled group of senior experts from the health, security, defence, microbiology, communications, legal, information technology and emergency management fields together to develop innovative concepts for pandemic management.
The consortium is identifying current best practice, user needs and research priorities in core areas of risk assessment, surveillance, communication and governance. The project is also mapping stakeholders and end-users responsible for managing key functions in pandemic management. This includes policy-makers in national, EU and global public health agencies, security agencies, national laboratories, national communications offices, staff in civil defence units and first responders in health care facilities including paramedics, triage staff and health care workers..
Project partners and roles
National University of Ireland, Galway (coordinator)
management, coordination, dissemination, information and communications technology, modelling and simulation
World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Office for Europe
surveillance, governance
Public Health Agency of Sweden (FoHM)
risk assessment, surveillance
Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI)
threat analysis, crisis management, defence, security
London School of Hygiene and tropical Medicine (LSHTM)
governance, legal frameworks, ethics, human rights
Université Catholique (UC) Louvain
microbiology, biosecurity, defence
IGS Strategic Communications
communications, social media
Project Overview
Specifically the project is:
- Conducting a comprehensive analysis of current and possible future threats (air, water, food and vector-borne diseases) including agents with potential for accidental/deliberate release;
- Analysing the actions taken by regional, national, EU and global actors during the Ebola outbreak, the H1N1 pandemic, the Zika outbreak and other high impact epidemics;
- Assessing user needs and gaps as well as identifying requirements to improve pandemic risk and emergency management capacity;
- Leveraging tools and systems developed by research projects for risk assessment, communication, education and governance improving cooperation between science and society and identifying innovative solutions;
- Examining and developing mechanisms to strengthen existing networks in the EU to ensure member states can work together inter-operably across borders;
- Enhancing international cooperation incorporating input from international research partners to address a major global threat;
- Ensuring consultation with and participation of the widest number of stakeholders at regional, national and EU levels including end-users, industry, universities, citizens groups, governments, the EC and its agencies.
Given the cross-border and multi-sectoral context of the health and security challenge for building pandemic management capacity, a systems-based methodology is being applied in order to:
- Assess current capacity for prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery activities;
- Support the gathering of user needs and requirements to improve capacity at transnational level;
- Identify opportunities to improve the process of early detection and response to pandemics.
Roadmap
PANDEM will develop a roadmap for investments in research and system developments that result in demonstrator topics to be realised in the phase II demonstration project. The objective of the Phase II project will be to produce a product, prototype or demonstrator of value to all EU Member States.