Innovative information-sharing strategies.

ProMED Many experts, both within and outside government, have warned of the need to improve capabilities for dealing with emerging infectious diseases; development of an effective global infectious disease surveillance system has been the primary recommendation. ProMED, a project of the Federation of American Scientists, was inaugurated in 1993 at a conference in Geneva as a vehicle for developing, coordinating, and promoting plans for a global program to identify and respond to emerging infectious diseases. Members of the ProMED Steering Committee include (among others) representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pan American Health Organization, and the International Office of Epizootics. In 1994, in cooperation with SatelLife/ HealthNet, ProMED developed an e-mail conference system, ProMED-mail, on the Internet. Originally developed to allow worldwide scientist-to-scientist communications on emerging infectious diseases, the system rapidly evolved into a prototype for an open-architecture, realtime outbreak reporting system intended to complement official surveillance systems. Today, with more than 10,000 subscribers from more than 125 countries, ProMED-mail is increasingly providing the first reports of infectious disease outbreaks. All items are read by scientists before posting. Reporting of incidents or outbreaks, infectious disease problems of emerging interest, and discussions on how to improve surveillance and response capabilities are especially encouraged. To subscribe to the ProMED-mail electronic conference, send an e-mail message to [email protected], and write “subscribe promed” in the text space.