DIGITAL HEALTH SURVEILLANCE AND EARLY OUTBREAK DETECTION: TRANSFORMING PUBLIC HEALTH RESPONSE SYSTEMS IN LOW- AND MIDDLE-INCOME COUNTRIES

Abstract

Digital health surveillance systems are increasingly identified as a key tool to bolster early outbreak detection and response, especially in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) where traditional surveillance systems are widely recognized as being limited by delayed reporting, weak infrastructure, and limited resources. This qualitative study examines how digital health surveillance can help better detect outbreaks of disease and investigates broader context around implementing and using digital health surveillance in LMIC contexts. A qualitative exploratory design was used, involving semi-structured interviews with disease monitoring system stakeholders comprising public health surveillance professionals, epidemiologists, healthcare data managers. Thematic analysis was used to summarize and reveal important themes and findings concerning system performance, obstacles to implementation, and challenges to operation. The results suggest that digital health surveillance systems play an important role in enhancing timeliness and efficiency of outbreak detection via real-time reporting and data analysis. Their success, however, is limited by infrastructure-related issues, inadequate health information system interoperability and low digital literacy of health care workers. While participants identified these challenges, they noted that digital surveillance could have transformative impact if supported by infrastructure development and capacity building programs to improve the public health response. The study concludes that digital health surveillance systems have a strong potential to enhance outbreak detection in LMICs, but require coordinated investments in technology, human resources and coordination at the systems level to achieve this. Improving these areas is critical for developing resilient and responsive public health surveillance systems.