Visiting Professor uses technology to fight cholera epidemic in Haiti

Mike McDonald, Dr.P.H., a School of Public Health visiting professor, is one of many public health experts who is attempting to identify the critical problem areas in Haiti in order to improve the health conditions there.

"In the days and weeks ahead, thousands of medical and public health workers, focused on the health and human security of Haitians, have the opportunity to prevent tens of thousands of cholera infections and innumerable deaths," he said.

There have been nearly 10,000 reported cases of cholera on the island, and almost 1,000 cholera-related deaths thus far, McDonald said.

McDonald has brought together colleagues from across the country to address the health issues in Haiti, and to help find more efficient ways to pinpoint where the problem areas are in the small country through the Haiti Medical and Public Health Information System.

"The Haiti Medical and Public Health Information System is the nervous system that is linking all the medical and public health organizations together to create a unity effort," McDonald said.

While Tropical Storm Tomas did minimal damage to the country, it did drench the island with rainwater, increasing the probability that cholera could spread through the water supply.

"We could see the [cholera] epidemic growing at a much faster rate, especially if it is going into communities where it is much harder to contain," he said.

Following the Haiti earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010, the traditional disease surveillance capabilities in place were not sufficient in Haiti’s complex operating environment, McDonald said.

For that reason, McDonald, among others, focused on adding two new dimensions to aiding the public health surveillance efforts there, he said.

One of the efforts is The Haiti Epidemic Advisory system, a subgroup of the Haiti Medical and Public Health Information System.

The advisory system uses social networks to identify health problems, reporting them to clinicians and public health officials 20 to 30 days sooner than traditional methods of reporting the same information, according to McDonald.

The third tier of communication is an improved crowd sourcing capability, enabling experts to get through cell phones and the Internet directly to Haitian people and humanitarian workers in the field, he said.

These functions have been able to address the lack of communication among Haitian health facilities and the nongovernmental organizations working in Haiti, McDonald said.

McDonald said responders to the situation in Haiti are looking to identify the top 100 plus intelligent social networks and organizations that have the ability to self trigger to address mission critical gaps and respond with smart swarms, social networks that utilize collective intelligence, to achieve a synergistic outcome.

With the help of clinicians, public health workers and other health sector workers in Haiti, better channels of communication have created a public health information-sharing environment capable of pinpointing where the cholera-related infections and deaths are emerging, he said.

"The overall effort amplifies the benefit through collaboration," he said.

In circumstances like Haiti, the idea is to work with U.S. Government agencies and nongovernmental organizations on an ongoing basis to deepen the U.S. societies’ capabilities to rapidly respond to disasters or other health issues, McDonald said.

This is done through information sharing environments, smart swarms information and 5th generation command control systems, which will act as complex adaptive systems with situation awareness, he said.

McDonald hopes to advance these 5th generation command and control capabilities to improve health and human security through the University of Maryland School of Public Health Center for Health Security and Infrastructure, which, he says, will have the ability to uniquely convene and introduce new science and technology into the work that has already been done.

According to McDonald, the center will initiate a national systems science consortium to help bring the best minds together to bear science, technology, management and governance on challenges that threaten the health and human security of Americans and their communities of interest globally.

McDonald hosted an open conference call on Nov. 16 to discuss the possibility of hosting a Crisis Camp, which would bring together volunteers to assist in organizing and aggregating the data that is being collected in the areas affected by cholera in Haiti.