Biodefense experts are highlighting the importance of person-to-person awareness and cooperation in identifying the potential terrorist release of a biological agent, National Defense Magazine reported in its September issue (see GSN, Aug. 1).

Public health professionals at a recent forum in Washington said existing surveillance technology, such as the federal government's Biowatch program that deploys monitoring technology in major U.S. cities, represents one limited aspect of the kind of monitoring required to detect the release of a disease agent.

Biosurveillance encompasses the collection and study of information to watch for the spread of disease within humans and other animal life, plants, food and the ecological system. As the field is so large, a large expertise base is needed that would involve participation from international, national, state and local entities, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention biosurveillance coordination chief Pamela Diaz. A lone information technology system is not the answer, she said.

The pursuit of novel technological monitoring systems should not be the chief focus of biosurveillance energies, multiple experts at the conference said. Rather, the focus should be on creating person-to-person cooperative efforts for the collection of data and the enhancement of surveillance systems that are already in place, they said.

Diaz said gathering the pertinent types of information to allow proper monitoring can prove challenging, as it necessitates more than one sign from hospitals and other sources to survey a particular area.

"That public-private partnership is important ... so a top-down approach doesn’t always work so well," the CDC official said.

Diaz said the Centers for Disease Control still must bolster its capabilities in sharing data between scientific facilities, fostering pathogen detection abilities worldwide and other sectors.

The federal public health agency is also trying to identify the various biosurveillance efforts spread throughout the federal government, in hopes of promoting interconnections and collaboration between specialists. Just within the Centers for Disease Control, there are 285 disease monitoring programs, Diaz said (David Ake, National Defense Magazine, September 2011).