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Signals, Signs and Syndromes: Tracing [Digital] Transformations in European Health Security

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2019

Stephen L ROBERTS Open the ORCID record for Stephen L ROBERTS [Opens in a new window]
Stephen L ROBERTS*
Affiliation:
Department of Health Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); email: s.l.roberts1@lse.ac.uk.
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Abstract

This article traces the ascent of new digital surveillance practices for European health security in an era of heightened global pandemic vigilance. In doing so, the article demonstrates how the confluence of evolving processes of digitisation and production of new digital data sources have enabled EU health security agents in recent years to enhance infectious disease surveillance through novel digitised practices of epidemic intelligence. Subsequently, the article thus argues that the centralisation of these new epidemic intelligence technologies to the core of EU health security initiatives has been foundational to the ascent of a new blended health surveillance practice operating across the EU, which amalgamates the digitised surface alerts of these new big data surveillance technologies with the long-established and traditional disease surveillance legacies of EU Member States. By utilising the concept of surface knowledge in relation to the ascent of these European epidemic intelligence practices, this article demonstrates the key epistemic and methodological shifts which occur in the production of knowledge, alerts and signals for accelerated infectious disease surveillance and the governing of public health risks within the EU.

Type
Symposium on European Union Governance of Health Crisis and Disaster Management
Information
European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 10 , Issue 4: Symposium on European Union Governance of Health Crisis and Disaster Management , December 2019 , pp. 722 - 737
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019

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22 ibid.

23 ibid.

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25 ibid.

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36 ibid.

37 ibid.

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48 In recent years, for example, there has been much discussion on how the linking of digitised electronic health records (EHRs) to person-specific pathogen genomic data could enhance the timeliness, precision and effectiveness of public health responses to infectious diseases. Within these new health surveillance practices, however, ongoing issues surrounding the possibility of re-identifying anonymised personal data continue to be of the highest ethical and legal concern. See further G Gilbert et al, “Communicable Disease Surveillance Ethics in the Age of Big Data and New Technology” (2019) 11(2) Asian Bioethics Review 173.