ICT4D and its Potential Role in the Detection, Surveillance, and Prevention of Novel Zoonotic Disease Outbreaks for Global, National, and Local Pandemic Prevention

Abstract

Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) and Information Technology for Development (IT4D) has been a strategy applied since the mid-1950s to support the work of advancing developing societies. There has been a range of technologies used for information collection, knowledge management, intercommunications, and information sharing. In recent years, ICT4D has evolved to include the uses of social media platforms and various analytical tools used for extracting information from such platforms to support disease prevention efforts. It involves the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to help in epidemiology. Parsimonious simulations have been brought to bear to inform the policies to support pandemic prevention in countries where pharmaceutical-based interventions may be too expensive to deploy broadly. Work done in this area suggests that appropriate non-pharmaceutical interventions exist if government leaders and the broad public can be sufficiently aware of an occurring emergence of a novel pathogen (or re-emergence of a pandemic-potential pathogen) before this pathogen becomes endemic. This chapter asks, What is the relationship between Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) and global, national, and local prevention of zoonotic diseases with pandemic potential? This work provides some early thoughts on ways ICT4D and IT4D may be deployed to this end, and it offers some insights about open-source (and some commercial) technologies that may be used for the work of pandemic prevention and protection of human health.