IEEE Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) 2013 - Call for Papers and Workshop Proposals

ISDS would like to share the following announcement about an upcoming opportunity to share your work and become informed on the latest developments in the ISI world. Please see the message below about the approaching deadlines for paper submission and workshop proposals for the IEEE Intelligence and Security Informatics 2013. 

IEEE Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) 2013

Big Data, Emergent Threats and Decision-Making in Security Informatics

Call for Papers and Workshop Proposals

Dates: June 4-7, 2013, Seattle, WA, USA

Host: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Conference website: http://ISIconference2013.org 

Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) is an interdisciplinary research field involving researchers in information technologies, computer science, public policy, bioinformatics, and social and behavior studies as well as local, state, and federal law enforcement and intelligence experts, and information technology industry consultants and practitioners to support counterterrorism and homeland security missions of anticipation, interdiction, prevention, preparedness and response to terrorist acts. The annual IEEE International ISI Conference series was started in 2003. The ISI 2013 conference program will feature three main topic streams:

·       Big Data in Security Informatics

·       Emergent Threats

·       Decision-Making in Security Informatics.

See TOPICS page in the conference website for details.

ISI 2013 will include a special session on Emergent Phenomena and Big Data sponsored by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).

IMPORTANT DATES

·       Paper submission due date: Feb 15, 2013

·       Notification of acceptance: Mar 18, 2013

·       Due date for workshop proposals: Feb 18, 2013.

PAPER SUBMISSION
Submissions may include papers on systems, methodology, test-bed, modeling, evaluation, and policy. Research should be relevant to informatics, organization, or public policy in applications of counter-terrorism or protection of local/national/international security in the physical world or cyberspace. Submission file formats are PDF and Microsoft Word. Required Word/LaTex templates (IEEE two-column format) can be found on IEEE's Publications web pages. Submissions can be long (6,000 words, 6 pages max) or short (3000 words, 3 pages max). Papers in English must be submitted electronically via the submission website athttps://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ieeeisi2013.

The accepted papers from ISI 2013 and its affiliated workshops will be published by the IEEE Press in formal Proceedings. Authors who wish to present a poster and/or demo may submit a 1-page extended abstract, which, if selected, will appear in Proceedings. Conference content will be submitted for inclusion into IEEE Xplore as well as other Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) databases. The selected IEEE ISI 2013 best papers will be invited for contribution to the Springer Security Informatics journal.

Best papers awards will be given in three categories:

·  Best paper

·  Runner-up paper

·  Best student paper.

WORKSHOPS
In conjunction with ISI 2013, several workshops will be held on June 4, 2013.Special-topic workshops in any areas of Intelligence and Security Informatics research and practice are welcome. Such events will be an integral part of the ISI-2013 conference program. Proposals in PDF or Microsoft Word not exceeding 3 pages should be emailed to the conference organizing committee at antonio@pnnl.gov by February 18, 2012 and contain the following information.

·  Title of tutorial/workshop

·  Preferred duration (half day vs. full day)

·  Brief bios of proposed organizer(s)

·  Objectives to be achieved.

Call for Nominations: BioSense 2.0 Governance Group Elections

The BioSense 2.0 team has released a call for nominations for representatives to serve on the BioSense 2.0 Government Group. The purpose of the BioSense 2.0 Governance Group is to ensure that the development of BioSense 2.0 is advised by the public health community with representation from state and local public health.

The BioSense 2.0 Governance Group is comprised of 15 representatives, including

• 3 from state and territorial public health agencies,
• 3 from local public health agencies,
• 2 from non-public health data providers (hospitals, EHR vendors, etc.),
• 1 from ASTHO,
• 1 from CSTE,
• 1 from ISDS,
• 1 from NACCHO,
• 1 from CDC,
• 1 from the US Department of Defense
• and 1 from the US Department of Veteran's Affairs.

Nominations are currently needed for the following elected positions:

• representatives from state and territorial public health agencies
• representatives from local public health agencies
• representatives from non-public health data providers

Nominations must be submitted by Friday, January 18, 2013. For complete instructions on how to submit a nomination, please see the Nomination Letter.

All questions relating to this nomination process should be directed to Scott Gordon.

2012 ISDS Conference: Best Poster Award

The ISDS annual conference is the premier event dedicated to the advancement of the science and practice of disease surveillance. This year’s theme was 'Expanding Collaborations to Chart a New Course in Public Health Surveillance' and it highlighted the importance of working together across agencies, sectors, and disciplines to improve surveillance methods and population health outcomes. The 2012 Conference was held at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina in San Diego, CA, December 4th-5th. One of the sessions that best captured the theme was the 2012 ISDS Poster Session.

2012 ISDS Conference Best Poster Award Winner.

We had a record number of abstracts submitted for presentation at the 2012 ISDS Conference and, among these, 94 were accepted for poster presentation. Every year, ISDS presents an award for the best poster. This year, all Conference attendees were given the opportunity to vote for the poster that they felt was the 'best.' 

There were many exceptional posters, making it a very competitive process. However, a winner was chosen and was announced at the end of the 2012 ISDS Conference - the poster New Strategy to Monitor and Evaluate Laboratory Biosafety Programs' presented by Heather Meeks, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

ISDS congratulates Dr. Meeks and her co-authors on this achievement. For more information on the poster topic, please click here.

Please Comment: PHIN Messaging Guide for Syndromic Surveillance Release 1.3

The syndromic surveillance stakeholder community is invited to provide comments on Release 1.3 of the PHIN Messaging Guide for Syndromic Surveillance now through December 21, 2012.

Over the last few months ISDS, in partnership and with the support of the Division of Informatics Solutions and Operations (OSELS) of the CDC, has been working to revise the PHIN Messaging Guide for Syndromic Surveillance (Guide). The Guide provides messaging specifications for emergency department and inpatient settings for select ADT and ORU (provided by our colleagues at the Washington State Department of Health) message types. The Guide was first released in 2011 as an emergency department and urgent care center messaging guide and is now being expanded to incorporate inpatient settings as well as stakeholder feedback on prior Guide releases.

Release 1.3 of the Messaging Guide provides a conformance profile for EHR Meaningful Use certification. It also includes an important update that creates a “Hospital Messaging Guide” incorporating Emergency Department, Urgent Care and Hospital Inpatient specifications. The goal of this Guide is to provide HL7 messaging specifications for hospitals providing clinical data to a public health agency for syndromic surveillance. This goal contrasts with that of the recently released ISDS Recommendations because it focuses on the technical specifications for providing the recommended data elements rather than the reasoning behind the data recommendations.

The new Messaging Guide Release 1.3 will improve upon prior releases by:

• Clarifying ambiguities from Release 1.0

• Responding to stakeholder feedback on prior releases

• Incorporating guidelines recommended by the ISDS Meaningful Use Workgroup for inpatient syndromic surveillance data

• Facilitating the formation of syndromic surveillance data exchange between hospitals (now including inpatient) and public health agencies

• Consolidating and clarifying hospital EHR conformance requirements for Meaningful Use certification

How to provide comments:

Stakeholder input helps ensure that the Guide will have widespread utility to facilitate both EHR development and the implementation of hospital-based syndromic surveillance systems. Following this community comment period ending on 12/21, the Guide will be revised further, and a finalized version will be released in the spring of 2013.

We encourage everyone interested in this initiative to provide comments on the Messaging Guide Release 1.3. You may provide feedback via an online survey available here or by emailing your comments to Becky Zwickl, MPH, ISDS Public Health Analyst, at bzwickl@syndromic.org. The comment period ends on Friday, December 21, 2012, 11:59 pm EST.

2012 ISDS Conference Highlight: 2012 ISDS Conference Abstracts

With whom will you collaborate next?

Peer-reviewed Abstracts are an important product of the ISDS Annual Conferences. Not only do they make up a large portion of the body of work on best practices and innovations in disease surveillance, the 2012Conference Abstracts (pdf) also highlight this year’s conference theme ‘Expanding Collaborations to Chart a New Course in Public Health Surveillance.’

Figure 1. The largest connected component of the
2012 ISDS Abstract author network. The circles
represent authors, with the color indicating primary
author affiliation. Lines are drawn between co-authors.

Looking at authorship of the 2012 accepted abstracts, there are a large number of inter-department and inter-agency collaborations (Figure 1), but there is room for expansion. This can be visualized by comparing the largest connected component of an authorship network visualization (Figure 1) versus the entire network (Figure 2). Each circle in the figures represents an author and the colors represent the author’s first affiliation. The lines connect co-authors. As you can see, there are many smaller groupings and groupings with homogeneous colors in Figure 2.

The ISDS Annual Conference has commonly been cited as the place where unique collaborative projects originate, and this may be due to the variety of stakeholder groups in attendance. The ISDS Conference draws professionals from a broad range of disciplines— epidemiology and computer science to mathematical modeling and health policy.

So, view the 2012Conference Abstracts (pdf) and come to San Diego, CA, prepared to discover your next collaboration!

Figure 2. Full 2012 ISDS Abstract author network. The circles represent authors, with the color indicating primary author affiliation. Lines are drawn between co-authors.

To find out more about the 2012 ISDS Conference, please visit: http://www.syndromic.org/annual-conference/2012.

Written by: Tera Reynolds, MPH, Program Manager, ISDS

Nominations by Nov 30: New CDC Advisory Committee

The CDC is looking for nominees for a new committee, the National Public Health Surveillance Biosurveillance Advisory Committee (NPHSB AC). ISDS would like to share the following message with more information about this committee and how to submit nominations. We encourage the ISDS community to self-nominate or nominate others for this unique opportunity to play a role in influencing the pressing public health surveillance and biosurveillance issues of today. 

-----Start Message-----

Dear  Partners:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is forming a new committee, the National Public Health Surveillance and Biosurveillance Advisory Committee (NPHSB AC) with the recent release of a Federal Register Notice (FRN) http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-10-03/html/2012-24423.htm.   As the Program Office charged with supporting the formation and work of the NPHSB AC, we are seeking your recommendations for members to serve on the NPHSB AC. 

Your perspective on public health surveillance and biosurveillance is important to CDC and would greatly enhance the work of the NPHSB AC.  The overall scope of the NPHSB AC is reflected in the FRN notice.  The primary focus of the NPHSB AC will address:

• How to take advantage of the expanding automation of health information
• How to better coordinate CDC’s multiple surveillance activities and their interface with state and local partners for both routine and urgent situations

It is desired that members of the NPHSB AC be recognized experts in one or more of the six Priority Areas outlined in the National Biosurveillance Strategy for Human Health http://intranet.cdc.gov/osels/phspo/bc/bc_pdf/NBSHH.pdf

which are:

• Electronic Health Information Exchange
• Electronic laboratory Information Exchange
• Unstructured Data
• Integrated Biosurveillance Information 
• Global Diseases Detection and Collaboration
• Biosurveillance Workforce of the Future

The FRN calling for member nominations was released on November 6th.  You can view and print this FRN at the following link: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-11-06/pdf/2012-27053.pdf.  Please follow the directions in the FRN and also take the additional step of validating the interest of your nominee(s) in serving prior to submitting their CV for consideration. Nominee submissions are due by November 30, 2012.  

Thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

Pamela Diaz, MD

Designated Federal Official, NPHSB AC

Deputy Director (Acting), Public Health Surveillance and Informatics Program Office

ISDS Releases Meaningful Use Recommendations

The International Society for Disease Surveillance is pleased to present "Electronic Syndromic Surveillance Using Hospital Inpatient and Ambulatory Clinical Care Electronic Health Record Data: Recommendations from the ISDS Meaningful Use Workgroup" (Recommendations). The ISDS Meaningful Use (MUse) Workgroup's Recommendations provide clarity for Stage 2 Meaningful Use, when on-going syndromic surveillance reporting will be required for eligible hospitals. These Recommendations provide a basis for planning and establishing data use relationships between Public Health Agencies and eligible providers while also building upon prior ISDS work by incorporating both lessons learned and broader stakeholder participation.

The Recommendations were developed in an open, iterative, and consensus-driven manner overseen by a multi-stakeholder workgroup of experts in public health, clinical care, medical informatics, and health information technology. Stakeholder feedback was gathered at the initial stages of development as well after Draft Guidelines and Revised Guidelines were released. In the end, 7 organizations and approximately 100 individuals participated in the development process. 

ISDS is grateful to the MUse Workgroup and HLN Consulting, LLC for their shared expertise, talents, and time over the one-year period that the Recommendations were developed. ISDS also thanks the subject matter experts, stakeholders, readers, and ISDS Board of Directors who provided thoughtful help and consideration during this process. Finally, thank you to the Division of Informatics Solutions and Operations, OSELS, CDC for making this work possible. ISDS is grateful for the on-going partnership and support of the CDC in convening the surveillance stakeholder community for expert, consensus recommendations about syndromic surveillance for Meaningful Use. 

Please visit the ISDS website for more information about the Recommendations and their development process.