The Global Health Security Initiative is an international partnership of the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States), Mexico, the European Commission and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to strengthen health preparedness and the global response to threats of CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) substances and pandemic influenza. The JRC has developed the EAR - Early Alerting and Reporting, dedicated to the enhancement of the detection and the risk assessment of pandemics and CBRN threats.
EAR aims to produce a single, common, web-based platform where all GHSI partners are able to access a list of possible, probable and credible CBRN and pandemic influenza threats, identified from open source, web-based medical intelligence systems. These reports are subjected to a generic risk assessment by subject matter experts from across the participating countries, whereby reports and alerts are issued to policy leads, day-to-day users from the GHSI member states and the European Union. EAR leverages EMM/Medisys technologies, developed by the JRC. European Media Monitor (EMM) is a live media monitoring system, while Medical Information System (MedSIsys) is a fully automatic public health surveillance system to monitor reporting on emerging public health threats.
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