Health surveillance systems

Health surveillance

Health surveillance systems

From fragmented, paper-based reporting to real-time intelligence that intercepts threats before they escalate.

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Signal detection
Response readiness
7days to detect
1day to notify
7days to respond

Overview

Turn raw surveillance data into early warning intelligence.

Governments and health authorities generate enormous volumes of surveillance data. Too often, that data sits in disconnected systems, arrives days or weeks late, or never reaches the decision-makers who need it.

BAO Systems designs, builds, and operates integrated surveillance systems that help public health departments detect, notify, and complete early response actions faster. Our work spans infectious disease tracking, disaster response, environmental monitoring, and mortality surveillance at community, national, and multi-country scale.

Areas of expertise

Four surveillance capabilities, one connected approach.

01

Infectious disease and outbreak surveillance

Detecting a potential outbreak in time to contain it requires data that flows instantly, accurately, and completely from facility to national level. Paper-based reporting and siloed systems make that impossible.

With partner support, BAO Systems built the electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response system (eIDSR) for the Democratic Republic of Congo Ministry of Health. Built on DHIS2 using metadata packages that comply with WHO reporting guidelines, the system tracks both case-based and event-based surveillance, triggers real-time alerts when outbreak symptoms are detected, and notifies all levels of the health system the moment a case is confirmed.

The eIDSR system is integrated in the national DHIS2 platform and transitioned to the Ministry of Health. Use of the system has improved data completeness, data timeliness, and enhanced the country’s outbreak response capabilities for priority diseases such as cholera and Ebola.

Relevant services
  • DHIS2 implementation
  • Data integration
  • Analytics and data science
Products used
  • DHIS2
  • BAO Analytics Platform
  • AWS hosting
02

Disaster response and shelter health surveillance

During a disaster, the window between data collection and public health action can be the difference between a contained situation and a secondary health crisis. Relief organizations have historically relied on manual processes that introduce 12 to 24 hour delays into that cycle.

BAO Systems worked with multiple disaster response agencies to deploy the Dharma Platform to modernize shelter health surveillance across the United States and its territories. The system replaced fax-based reporting with near real-time line-level data collection and analysis across 24 Disaster Relief Operations, covering 6,408 shelter health surveillance records and 4,408 client records.

It enables rapid identification of emerging health threats across multiple shelter sites and gives authorities accurate, timely evidence to respond confidently to safety concerns.

Relevant services
  • Digital transformation
  • Data platform design
  • Cloud operations
Products used
  • Dharma Platform
03

Environmental and wastewater surveillance

Wastewater surveillance is an increasingly critical early warning tool, capable of detecting disease presence in a population before clinical cases appear. Managing wastewater sample data across multiple countries and sites requires standardized, structured systems that manual tracking cannot provide.

Case study Strengthening pandemic preparedness through global wastewater intelligence ↓
Relevant services
  • DHIS2 implementation
  • Data management
  • Data architecture
Products used
  • DHIS2 Tracker
04

Mortality and vital statistics surveillance

Understanding the cause of death is foundational to effective public health practice. Without accurate, timely mortality data, health authorities cannot target interventions, allocate resources, or measure progress against preventable deaths.

As part of a data modernization initiative, BAO Systems transitioned a large, multicountry surveillance project from an on-premises infrastructure to a scalable, serverless, global AWS cloud platform. The platform processes demographic, clinical, and laboratory data in real time and through overnight batch processing, generating accurate cause-of-death data on child mortality across multiple countries.

In Sub-Saharan Africa,, BAO Systems built an electronic Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response (eMPDSR) system for a state Ministry of Health. Built on DHIS2 Tracker with mobile data collection, the platform supports field workers while maintaining strict client confidentiality, giving decision-makers timely, accurate data to design interventions that reduce maternal and neonatal deaths.

Relevant services
  • Cloud infrastructure
  • Data platform design
  • DHIS2 implementation
Products used
  • DHIS2 Tracker
  • AWS

Featured case study

Strengthening pandemic preparedness through global wastewater intelligence.

A multi-country surveillance programme moved from fragmented manual tracking to a structured, centralised platform for managing the end-to-end sample lifecycle.

The challenge

Traditional disease surveillance relies on patients falling ill and seeking medical care, creating a lag that allows pathogens to spread unchecked before public health authorities can respond. Wastewater surveillance offers a non-invasive alternative: by analyzing sewage, health officials can detect the presence of pathogens including SARS-CoV-2, influenza viruses (H1N1 and H3N2 subtypes), poliovirus within 5-7 days of those pathogens entering the sewage, weeks before clinical cases peak. The challenge is not collection but organization: converting fragmented, manual data into actionable intelligence fast enough to matter.

The solution

BAO Systems led the digital modernization of a legacy fragmented, manual data system for a multi-country wastewater surveillance programme. Following consultation with the funding organisation, BAO Systems designed and built a unified, open-source system to manage the end-to-end lifecycle of samples: from initial collection to the management of complex test results. All metadata are standardized across diverse geographic regions and compliant with the CDC National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) reporting requirements, covering five countries across three continents.

The outcome

Moving from static spreadsheets to a structured, centralized platform transformed the program’s operational capacity. Data accessibility, usability, and visualization of viral trends across countries and continents improved significantly. When a spike in viral load is detected in a specific location’s wastewater, health officials can now preemptively alert hospitals, launch targeted prevention campaigns, or distribute treatments before the healthcare system becomes overwhelmed. The result is a shift from reactive to proactive public health: a scalable digital foundation that gives health leaders a high-resolution map of disease activity and the time to act on it.

Capability at a glance

Global surveillance delivery at scale.

BAO Systems has delivered surveillance systems across 85+ countries since 2012. Projects span infectious disease, environmental monitoring, disaster response, and mortality surveillance, supporting national governments, multilateral agencies, and US federal health programmes.

The BAO Systems approach

Open standards. Local capacity. Sustainable ownership.

Surveillance modernization does not require replacing existing systems with expensive proprietary platforms. BAO Systems builds on open standards including FHIR and HL7, using DHIS2 as the data backbone…

For state and local health departments working with constrained budgets and limited in-house IT capacity, this approach makes modern, scalable surveillance infrastructure achievable without long-term lock-in to a single vendor.

Our approach leverages multi-modal applications and platforms to strengthen and optimize integrated disease surveillance, with the goal of near-real time data to inform deployment of resources and decision making.

Platform ecosystem

A connected architecture for surveillance intelligence.

ConneX

In many health programs, the delay between a POC test result and a clinical or programmatic alert is not a technology problem, it is a data transmission problem. A result sits on a diagnostic instrument, or on paper, until it is manually entered into a health information system. By the time an alert is generated, hours or days may have passed. BAO ConneX Link eliminates that lag.

BAO ConneX Link is a hardened hardware gateway that connects POC diagnostic instruments directly to health information systems such as DHIS2, OpenMRS, and LIS platforms. Results transmit automatically on test completion over cellular, Wi-Fi, or Ethernet, reducing the delay between a positive test and a clinical alert from hours or days to minutes.

A store-and-forward buffer ensures no results are lost during connectivity outages, and per-device GPS validation cross-checks each result against the registered facility to protect data integrity.

Remote management is handled through the BAO ConneX Core portal, allowing configuration and firmware updates across entire device fleets without field visits. With native support for POCT1-A, HL7 v2/v3, ASTM, FHIR, and custom adapters, ConneX Link connects to existing systems without additional middleware.

It is currently deployed across 2,000+ devices in 8 countries: the United States, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

DHIS2

Where integrated disease surveillance systems do not yet exist, BAO leverages its experience with open-source DHIS2 software, being able to quickly architect and deploy a sovereign system, on-premise or in the cloud, that leverages international-standard metadata packages for disease surveillance.

BAO Enterprise Intelligence Platform

The BAO Enterprise Intelligence Platform enables whole systems integration from laboratories, EMR, human surveillance systems, animal health systems, and environmental wastewater signals.

Agentic AI is layered on the platform to conduct forecasting, anomaly detection, and disease specific algorithms, as well as to generate early response recommendations.

Every surveillance system BAO Systems builds is designed to outlast the project that funds it. That means investing in local capacity, building on open standards, and ensuring data flows reliably under real-world conditions: intermittent connectivity, distributed teams, and complex political environments.

Prioritizing local capacity over vendor dependence ensures that health authorities retain full, independent ownership of their data and infrastructure long after the initial project concludes.

Strengthen your surveillance data infrastructure.

To discuss how BAO Systems can support your surveillance data infrastructure, contact the team.

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