Digital Health Hub for AMR delivers digital epidemiology training to public health epidemiologists
The EPSRC Digital Health Hub for Antimicrobial Resistance recently delivered a specialist training course on digital epidemiology to public health epidemiologists, equipping them with new tools and perspectives for understanding disease trends using data generated outside the public health system.
The course, led by Professor Ingemar J. Cox from UCL and Professor Elad Yom-Tov from Bar-Ilan University, introduced participants to the growing field of digital epidemiology. Key topics included:
Sources of digital data and their potential to track health trends in real time.
Advantages and limitations of internet-derived data for public health.
Ethical and legal considerations in using such data, including GDPR compliance.
Practical methods for analysing text-based data and case studies of applications to infectious disease monitoring.
The course attracted around 50 epidemiologists from across the UK, with participants joining both online and in person. Attendees came from a range of public health bodies, including the Public Health Agency Northern Ireland, Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Digital Health and Care, Northern Ireland and Public Health Wales.
This marks a significant milestone: our Hub is the only organisation providing such training across all UK public health bodies, helping to build capacity and awareness of how digital data originally derived for non-health purposes can complement traditional epidemiological approaches.
Dr Mengdie Zhuang, Deputy Director and Training Lead of the Hub, said:
“Digital epidemiology is a rapidly evolving field. The growing appetite among public health professionals to integrate digital data into future surveillance and response system is exciting, and it was inspiring to see a high level of engagement from participants across sectors and nations.”
