openFMD: Revolutionizing Global Epidemiological Intelligence of FMD
Dr Antonello Di Nardo Senior Postdoctoral Scientist World Reference Laboratory for Foot-and-Mouth Disease (WRLFMD)
Dr Cédric Dézier VPH Technical Service Director Veterinary Public Health Center
On 12 th June 2024, the Global Foot and Mouth Disease Research Alliance (GFRA) hosted a webinar titled «openFMD – a digital platform to support global epidemiological intelligence of foot-and-mouth disease». The webinar featured Dr. Antonello Di Nardo, a senior molecular epidemiologist at the Pirbright Institute’s Vesicular Disease Reference Laboratory. Dr. Di Nardo introduced openFMD, a novel data sharing and decision support platform aimed at enhancing global epidemiological intelligence of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD).
openFMD is a unique access point for all information, data, and analytics related to FMD. It includes a portfolio of interactive analytical tools developed for various tasks. These tools include: FMDbase, an expert-curated database of FMDV sequences; FMDtype, an analytical tool that performs annotation, genotyping and phylogenetic reconstruction of VP1 coding sequences; FMDwatch*, a surveillance resource to explore and better understand the FMD epidemiological situation across the globe; and Pragmatist, a tool for vaccine bank managers or risk managers for vaccine selection.
Each analytical tool can be tailored by the users to address their requirements, for example Pragmatist allows users to modify all parameters used by the tool and include their own vaccine strain data. This flexibility is an essential feature, as it enables inclusion of data from vaccines used by international vaccine banks as well as those produced locally in endemic settings.
* It should be noted that there are still a few (hopefully minor) issues that need to be resolved. These problems relating to the display of maps and network connectivity are being resolved by The Pirbright Institute IT team.
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