Infectious disease surveillance and outbreak investigation are critical components of global health security, requiring accurate, timely, and comprehensive data to track disease spread, understand transmission dynamics, and implement effective interventions. Data collection and management tools play an essential role in these efforts, transforming raw data into understandable insights that can guide public health responses. By leveraging modern technologies—from electronic health records and mobile data collection apps to sophisticated geographic information systems (GIS) and machine learning algorithms—public health organizations can monitor disease trends, identify emerging threats, and coordinate responses with high speed and precision. It is therefore critical that public health professionals are proficient in using modern data management tools.
The Twinning project is tasked to carry out a training course for public health professionals on epidemiological surveillance. The first two modules for public health epidemiologists and microbiologists were successfully conducted in May 2024.
Module 3 of the training course was implemented from 30 October to 1 November 2024 by a team of 6 THL experts and dedicated to the presentation of THL’s experiences and practices in conducting epidemic investigations and using various electronic tools. The training’s approach combined demonstration of THL’s exercises in performing an outbreak investigation and execution of exercises by the training participants. This approach enabled a learning aspect about practical epidemiological work and offered an outlook on the training methodology used by Finnish colleagues. The THL experts also presented a few electronic mapping tools, which they use in their work. The demo was also skills oriented to give the participants an opportunity to test it for possible future use. The training participants received training material and manuals for the tools demonstrated in the training.
All in all, the training module, which was EACCME-accredited, was highly appraised by its participants for the practical orientation, and by the training facilitators for the active engagement of the trainees into the process.