• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.219-224
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• 2008

Due to heightened concerns regarding possible bioterrorist attacks, the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention introduced syndromic surveillance systems, which have been run by emergency departments in hospitals throughout Korea since 2002. These systems are designed to identify illness clusters before diagnoses are confirmed and reported to public health agencies, to mobilize a rapid response, and thereby to reduce morbidity and mortality. The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention performed drop-in syndromic surveillance successfully during the World Cup Football Games in 2002, the Universiad games in 2004, and the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in 2005. In addition, sustainable syndromic surveillance system involving the collaborative efforts of 125 sentinel hospitals has been in operation nationwide since 2002. Because active data collection can bias decisions a physician makes, there is a need to generate an automatic and passive data collection system. Therefore, the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention plans to establish computerized automatic data collection systems in the near future. These systems will be used not only fur the early detection of bioterrorism but also for more effective public health responses to disease.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.214-218
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• 2008

Bioterrorism events have worldwide impacts, not only in terms of security and public health policy, but also in other related sectors. Many countries, including Korea, have set up new administrative and operational structures and adapted their preparedness and response plans in order to deal with new kinds of threats. Korea has dual surveillance systems for the early detection of bioterrorism. The first is syndromic surveillance that typically monitors non-specific clinical information that may indicate possible bioterrorism-associated diseases before specific diagnoses are made. The other is infectious disease specialist network that diagnoses and responds to specific illnesses caused by intentional release of biologic agents. Infectious disease physicians, clinical microbiologists, and infection control professionals play critical and complementary roles in these networks. Infectious disease specialists should develop practical and realistic response plans for their institutions in partnership with local and state health departments, in preparation for a real or suspected bioterrorism attack.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.77-86
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• 2022

The destructive impact of contagious diseases outbreaks on all life facets necessitates developing effective solutions to control these diseases outbreaks. This research proposes an end-to-end, data-driven platform which consists of multiple modules that are working in harmony to achieve a concrete goal: early detection of contagious diseases outbreaks (i.e., epidemic diseases detection). Achieving that goal enables decision makers and people in power to act promptly, resulting in robust prevention management of contagious diseases. It must be clear that the goal of this proposed platform is not to predict or forecast the spread of contagious diseases, rather, its goal is to promptly detect contagious diseases outbreaks as they happen. The front end of the proposed platform is a web-based dashboard that visualizes diseases outbreaks in real-time on a real map. These outbreaks are detected via another component of the platform which utilizes data mining techniques and algorithms on gathered datasets. Those gathered datasets are managed by yet another component. Specifically, a mobile application will be the main source of data to the platform. Being a vital component of the platform, the datasets are managed by a DBMS that is specifically tailored for this platform. Preliminary results are presented to showcase the performance of a prototype of the proposed platform.