2021 has seen groundbreaking scientific and collaborative achievements in epidemic research, uncovering novel challenges and breakingthrought solutions for national and international Epidemic Intelligence efforts. And the the H2020 project MOnitoring Outbreak events for Disease surveillance in a data science context (MOOD) has joined the ride contributing with significant achievements. To set forth these advancements , the coordination and communication teams organized the online MOOD Mid-Term Progress Event on July 12, 2021, providing an extensive recap of the work done so far by each WP, with particular attention to workflow deviations due to COVID-19 and adjustments considering MOOD’s end-user needs.
The meeting saw the participation of more than 40 MOOD partners, an occasion to finally get together after the last MOOD Xmas Event in December 2020 despite the limitations of a virtual setting.
During the course of the meeting, the leader of each WP presented the major advancements (i.e., publications, deliverables, work progress), as well as the hinderings encountered since the beginning of the project. The opening presentation included an overall project progress overview by MOOD’s project coordinator Renaud Lancelot, highlighting the great scientific support provided by MOOD’s researchers to public and veterinary health agencies during COVID-19 pandemic over the course of 2020 and the beginning of 2021.
The presentations
The meeting proceeded then with the presentations of:
– Wim van Bortel from WP1 on the progress and perspectives on MOOD’s interface with stakeholders for innovation;
– WP2 leader Annapaola Rizzoli’s on the research advancements and future work on disease profiles, epidemiological data collection and modelling for each of the selected prototype disease;
– Maguelonne Teisseire, leader of WP3, presented MOOD’s progress on data Ingestion and Integration along with challenges due to COVID-19;
– WP4 researchers Vittoria Colizza, Pascal Poncelet, Jean Artois, Philipe Lemey and Chiara Poletto showed their team’s efforts in MOOD’s disease modelling, as well as major deviations and delays caused by COVID-19 pandemic;
– Cedric Marsboom for WP5 exposed progress and hinderings on the development of pre-operational MOOD platform;
– Tomislav Hengl from WP6 illustrated the status and planning for MOOD’s communications, public relations, co-creation, events, hackathons and business intelligence.
This internal checkup provided also a stage to MOOD partners where to share major challenges and opportunities with each other, under the form of a live feedback session. One significant point of discussion that drew the attention of MOOD partners is that certainly, COVID-19 emergency led to unprecedented data sharing and rapidity of work in the context of the OneHealth approach, highlighting the importance of sharing data and disease metrics transparently across regions of the world: a wave of interest that MOOD is set ride over the course of the next years.
“The discussion that we had this afternoon shows that we need to assess the [users] needs very closely, and this is changing and evolving all the time.” said Renaud in conclusion of the meeting. In preparation for the MOOD innovations for epidemic intelligence: user consultation meeting held the day after (July 13), Renaud eventually remarked: “Among the [end]users, we have a very different set of people: from Public Health to Veterinary Health, from Epidemic Intelligence practitioners to decision-makers: so it is very important to involve them [in the co-creation approach].”
Both recordings and presentations are available for MOOD partners only. Please contact the coordination of any other inquiry.