Development of a next-generation automated biological detection system for the U.S. must overcome challenging scientific and technical hurdles but the existing BioWatch system and the next-generation system in development are complementary to the nation’s public health surveillance system that relies on hospitals and public health agencies to detect biological threats, according to a new report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
“BioWatch has the potential to provide a more timely alert than the public health and health care systems if a large-scale aerosol attack using certain pathogens were to occur in the localities where BioWatch is deployed, and if BioWatch successfully detects the pathogen,” says the report, BioWatch and Public Health Surveillance: Evaluating Systems for the Early Detection of Biological Threats. “In addition, the proposed Generation 3 technology, if it can be successfully tested and deployed, should be able to provide timelier detection than Generation 2.”
The report was prepared at the behest of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to congressional direction. The report was delivered to DHS a year ago with an abbreviated version released publicly this month.
The NAS says that the currently deployed Gen-2 system and the Gen-3 system, which is in development and testing, require more “systematic technical and operational testing” and be evaluated from a risk-management perspective.
The report says that the public health surveillance system is broader and more flexible than BioWatch, “permitting detection of infectious diseases arising from a broader range of exposures.”
The current Gen-2 BioWatch system is deployed to more than 30 major U.S. cities and essentially consists of fixed aerosol sample collectors that require manual sample retrieval for laboratory analysis of potential deadly pathogens. Sample to response time is lengthy, often over 24 hours.
The Gen-3 systems, which are being developed by separate competing teams led by Northrop Grumman [NOC] and United Technologies [UTX], are supposed to automatically sample the air, process the sample, and report the results several times a day as part of a networked communications system. The program is currently being managed by the DHS Office of Health Affairs (OHA).
The report includes a series of recommendations, among which call on DHS to work with the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation to develop an aggressive research and development program consisting of short and long-term goals. The short-term goals are to improve the capabilities and cost effectiveness of environmental monitoring of airborne biological threats. The long-term goals are to “improve the knowledge base needed to support” breakthroughs in biosurveillance.
Other recommendations include improved cooperation between OHA and the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, which managed the early Gen-3 development efforts, coordinated support by DHS and its federal partners to local jurisdictions to improve their ability to respond to a BioWatch Actionable Result, and funding from DHS to local jurisdictions to cover local costs associated with supporting BioWatch.