Sahana alerting software for real-time biosurveillance in India and Sri Lanka

"Evaluating a real-time biosurveillance program" (RTBP) is a research project that field tested the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) content standard for exchanging public health risk information. The end-to-end RTBP Information Communication Technology (ICT) system is one that digitized patient clinical data using mobile phones, detected unusual events in the dataset with spatial and spatio-temporal statistical analysis tools, and disseminated detected adverse events to health workers and health officials in targeted geographic locations. The RTBP aiming to combat disease outbreaks before reaching epidemic states, pilot tested a single input multiple output web driven alerting application for the simultaneous dissemination of SMS, Email, and Web based CAP messages. This software is integrated in to the Sahana Disaster Management bundle of free and open source software. The field testing was carried out with health departments and healthcare workers in India and Sri Lanka. The paper discusses the design and utility of the software as well as the research finding with respect to the usability of the software and the comprehensibility of the CAP message by health workers.