RECON Workshop

SESSION OVERVIEW

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The R Epidemics Consortium (RECON) was founded in 2016, in the wake of the 2014-2016 west-African Ebola outbreak with the specific aim to strengthen epidemiological analytics in humanitarian health emergencies including outbreaks of infectious disease. In 2018 RECON transitioned into becoming a non-profit NGO consisting of over 30 contributing members in the areas of operational response, epidemiology, health policy, programming and mathematical modelling, members come from an array of organisations including operational organisations and academia. 

RECON is build on two main pillars, the development of the next generation tools for epidemiological analytics and on the ground capacity building and training. This includes packages specifically designed for handling, visualising, and analysing outbreak data using cutting-edge statistical methods, as well as more general-purpose tools for data cleaning, versioning, and encryption, and system infrastructure.

Our packages must fulfil three key aspects:

• Efficiency: our tools can be used in real time to improve situation awareness and inform intervention strategies.
• Reliability: our tools are thoroughly and constantly tested using professional software development methods.
• Accessibility: our tools are free, open-source, and available on virtually any platform; they can be used with different levels of expertise, and aim to provide graphical user interfaces implementing the most important functionalities.

During this session we will focus on how RECON was founded, how it functions as an NGO (also within Europe), showcase number of tools, their current utilisation in DRC as part of the Ebola response, joint projects with partners including MSF (R4Epis), the global training activities, but mostly engage with partiicpants in how to advance applied analytics in public health epidemiology.

SPEAKERS

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