Strengthening infectious disease surveillance in the Netherlands

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the critical need to improve public health preparedness and response to future cross-border health threats on both national and European level. This EU action grant in the field of crisis preparedness under the EU4Health Programme will assist the improvement and strengthening of infectious disease surveillance systems in Member States at national level, in line with the EU4Health programme and outcomes of the preparatory Joint Action UNITED4Surveillance, and thereby enhancing the (pandemic) preparedness for future health crisis threats. Within this 4-year project the Netherlands will focus on improving surveillance infrastructures in three core areas (WP2: hospital surveillance, WP3: citizen science, and WP4: sero-surveillance) and implementing several innovative initiatives in daily practice. The core work packages are crosslinked by the addition of novel detection methods (WP3 and WP4) and introducing artificial intelligence techniques (WP2 and WP3). This will contribute to improved integration, interoperability, automatization, and digitalization of our current infectious disease surveillance systems in the Netherlands.