ESA Health and Biotech Commercialization Event

Part of the panel for a roundtable discussion on EO for Public Health Management. Key points discussed:

Value of EO: long-time series for retrospective analysis of environmental drivers of outbreaks/ emergence of pathogens; spatial and temporal scales impossible from field; non-political birds-eye view; gives a good idea of trends; range of variables we can sense from space applicable to health contexts

Opportunities: identifying associations to improve predictive capability of forecasting future epidemiology- mitigating outbreaks before they happen; monitoring at risk areas for early warning systems

Challenges: need to communicate capabilities of EO within health sector; make applications and data accessible for non-EO data scientists to be integrated within existing health risk models; analysis-ready data

Engagement with users: need to understand requirements of users and engage with these throughout so EO can be utilised for decision-making; which resolution needed; potential of a platform to convert EO data into useable products for health industry (e.g. aggregate by district/month to match epidemiological records) to increase uptake

Areas not being utilised effectively yet: metrics of wellbeing as well as just disease; applications on vector-borne diseases starting to be used, more could be done for water-borne diseases (Plymouth Marine Lab novel work on monitoring water quality and flooding disease risk in Lake Vembanand, India using EO and citizen science discussed by keynote speaker, Gemma Kulk)