Consolidation of national eHealth infrastructure for combined genomic-epidemiologic surveillance of infectious diseases

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Commission established the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA). It strengthens the European Health Union with better preparedness and response to future national, cross-border or pandemic outbreaks of infectious disease. The HERA-Incubator-2021 project was launched by HERA, and its implementation in Belgium makes it possible to develop a national infrastructure for the collection of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) data and to build a sustainable infrastructure in which genomic data can be linked to clinical and epidemiological data. This can be used more broadly to anticipate outbreaks and manage risks. The project aims to process larger data volumes in case of major outbreaks or a pandemic. The HERA-Incubator-2021 action was set up as a proof-of-principle. A design of the structure and processes for the clinical, microbiological and genomic data transition was obtained through facilitation of healthdata.be. A central BioIT platform, connected to the data collection, will provide automated pipelines for autonomic processing of genomic data, which will allow harmonised pathogen analyses. Five pilot national reference centers (NRCs) for human microbiology will demonstrate the transition towards the national eHealth infrastructure. With this project proposal developments of the previous action will be consolidated and further expanded. The focus will lie on enhancing base functionalities, i.e. data input/output platform, central BioIT platform, central NRC platform, and roll-out to other participants, i.e. more laboratories and pathogens. Additionally, a strong investment will be made on the communication and dissemination of the project and its objectives. We aim to highlight the future possibilities of the national eHealth infrastructure for public health response in relation to genomics-based infectious disease outbreak investigations, surveillance and overall pandemic preparedness.