Hive – people, pandemics and health information platform | IGF 2023 Lightning Talk #48

John LEE

The analysis highlights the importance of pandemic preparedness and emphasizes the pivotal roles of digital platforms and community involvement in effectively addressing pandemics. It acknowledges that pandemics are escalating in both scale and frequency, as demonstrated by the devastating impact of COVID-19 on a global scale. To address this challenge, the World Health Organization (WHO) has introduced the HIVE, a digital platform that aims to provide trustworthy health information with a community-centered approach.

Digital platforms like the HIVE play a crucial role in pandemic preparedness. Through dialogue, support, and collaboration, these platforms create a space for collective intelligence and efficient access to information. They also tackle the issue of infodemics and misinformation by providing accurate health information, combating the spread of false information during pandemics. By harnessing technology and fostering partnerships, digital platforms such as the HIVE facilitate the effective dissemination of vital health information to the public.

The analysis also emphasizes the crucial role of community involvement in addressing pandemics. It recognizes that communities have a direct influence on individuals’ access to information and decision-making during health emergencies. Hence, active engagement of communities in pandemic response efforts is essential. Community-driven platforms are particularly valuable as they provide local, contextualized information and facilitate connections with global health experts. Informed communities actively participating in developing solutions are vital in pandemic response and control measures.

Furthermore, the analysis highlights that the integration of digital platforms and community involvement in pandemic preparedness aligns with multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Specifically, SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) are directly related to these initiatives. The integration of digital platforms and community participation not only enhances healthcare outcomes but also promotes sustainable development through collaborative efforts.

In conclusion, the analysis underscores the urgency of improving pandemic preparedness and highlights the instrumental roles of digital platforms, such as the HIVE, and community involvement in addressing pandemics. By leveraging the power of technology and fostering community engagement, stakeholders can collectively combat infodemics, provide accurate health information, and effectively respond to health emergencies. Furthermore, these efforts align with the broader SDGs, indicating the potential for comprehensive and sustainable approaches to global health challenges.

John LEE:
All right. We’re on time. Let’s get started. Good morning and distinguished guests. I guess between now and the next opening ceremony, we have a very light session of the lightning talk. And thank you very much for this opportunity to share a little bit about the HIVE. The title is People, Pandemic, and Information Platform, which is WHO’s digital space for health emergency preparedness platform powered by communities. My name is John Lee, technical officer at WHO headquarters Geneva in Switzerland. I work with an area where teams are working on preparing for next pandemic. As you can see, it’s not really a popular topic. We just went through a pandemic. But I guess the idea is that when next pandemic happens, not if, when the next pandemic happens, then we’ll be ready as a global community together. The purpose of this presentation is to share the high level overview of the platform. And as you can see in the name, like a beehive, we envision a platform that is creating a space of activity, support, and community to come together. You see the photo up there is a Kyoto. It’s great to be here. Did a little bit of the homework about the Kyoto. The colleague sitting over here might know a bit better about. Apparently in 1467, the Onin War happened. And, you know, it actually triggered the Kyoto citizens to develop autonomous communities to protect their lives by themselves. And in 16th century, it evolved into another version, Choshi Kinomuku, which in turn become Choki or Chosadame, which they form a rules, formulated by the residents of the Kyoto for the purpose of making the comfortable for themselves and maintaining favorable environment in the community. I see that there is the important similarities there between the hive platform and the community sense in Kyoto. So we just went through COVID-19. So devastation caused by the pandemic COVID-19 has brought really urgency to strengthen the way the world prepare for, prevent, and detect the response to health emergencies. The question is, are we prepared to globally respond to the next major pandemic? Are we ready to cooperate and perform across countries and across sectors to face such a threat? Not only to protect health in major epidemic and pandemic, but also to protect economic development, protect political and social systems, and not to repeat the history again. This is a bit of a chart about what are the tangible impact or devastating effect of COVID-19 and other emergencies that we just went through. It was a destabilizing event, and the effect of the pandemic is continued to reverberate in our society. Our political system, health system, and global economy. So it is important to note that pandemics are increasing in impact and scale and frequency, and the epidemic and pandemic risk has become a global strategic concern. I’ll also note that this was the second pandemic of 21st century. So like it or not, this is new normal, and we don’t expect the frequency of these epidemics to go down, unfortunately. In fact, the vulnerabilities of all over the world, whether it’s developed or developing countries, have increased, not decreased. So the question is, how do we prepare the communities before the next pandemic happens again? And especially, obviously, there are many work to be done, but I’ll be speaking to the preparedness of the communities when it comes to preparing for the next pandemic. So the WHO HIVE team envisions community-centered, trustworthy health information that facilitates health information and synchronous and asynchronous collaborative working practices, supported by a few functionalities, including community spaces, document repositories, and documentation, instant chat, and breakout groups. Some of the technological effect, but I guess that when you think about the community center approach, to me, it is fully informed and a properly informed community who are actively engaging in developing solutions. As some of the earlier speakers in previous session mentioned, very important topic about this as well, is that having the community centered and community-led is a very important piece of preparing our digital ecosystem for the next era. Each individual is a part of the multiple communities. For example, the workplace can be a faith community, a learning community like universities, or health or wellness, and each community influences an individual and their access to information and decisions, and an individual makes during the health emergency, and how they behave. So the challenge is that when the high-impact public health event happens, it’s often accompanied by the infodemic. I think it was touched on a number of sessions throughout this IGF. It’s defined as an over abundance of information, whether it’s accurate or not, in the digital space or physical space. It accompanies acute health events such as an outbreak, an epidemic, which is what we saw in the recent event of COVID-19. The infodemics drive today, especially in digitized and interconnected ecosystem right now, and individuals are exposed to a very complex and highly targeted information ecosystem, and the content is not always from the most reliable sources, and they can serve to confirm biases. And as you know, it takes time to build trust, and it’s hard to earn, but as we observed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s so easy to erode very quickly. So a small team at WHO began to think, I think this was before COVID-19 pandemic, how do we actually get the right information to the right people in the format that is actually appropriate, so that they can make decisions to protect their communities. And when we recently went through the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to answer the question of, you know, can we rapidly ramp up the communication and address the key questions and concerns with large networks? And the answer is yes. We were able to, you know, use the opportunity provided the COVID pandemic to engage with the networks like Worldwork Network, all the industries and associations, the faith network and youth councils, and other associations and groups associated across the world. So building on some of those success that we envision, building a digital community space that is safeguarding communities during high-impact public health events, and creating a space for people to come together and discuss about, you know, whether they might have a question about the situation, whether the sum of public health social measures, you know, what does that mean in their context, and also reach out to the experts, whether it’s the WHO folks or the peripheral networks in the Ministry of Health or other advocacy groups and stakeholders within pandemic preparedness. There are a few features. I wouldn’t make this into the technical one. There’s four key components. There is ability for you to connect and collaborate. You can host and attend events. So then you can build what you saw in digital, the hybrid format of the events such as this, that you can really build the collective intelligence together, and you can access information that is slightly more efficient using, thanks to the technologies, machine learning and AI technology to really connect the people, information, and communities, and having a space, the digital space people can go to when it comes to the specific topic of epidemic pandemic preparedness. All right. So with the, and before we open up to a quick discussion with the participants here, you know, as a WHO, we’re not a technology expert, but we are the technical experts in health. So we would like to invite as many experts as possible, especially in digital space and in IGF is a really important forum to learn about what it means and engage in communities in digital space. So we need help from global experts in bringing the communities together while leveraging all the technologies that is available and enabling building community relationships for the preparedness and response to health emergencies. And most importantly, not go through what we went through is not leaving anyone behind, addressing the vulnerable and marginalized and the communities whose needs are also addressed and they have a place they can go to, to interact with the people. And I give the communities opportunity to bring the local and contextualize information that is the more appropriate for them. And also connect with the global, the experts of the global health public issues. Also this, this will, could create an opportunity to directly or indirectly the manage the, some of the issues around the mis and disinformation naturally by participating and not letting some of the questions and concern, progress it into the information bias, thereby progressing further into narratives than what we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic that created the huge impact on public health and everyone’s livelihood and life in general. So with that, I’ll end my presentation. Thank you for attention. And yeah, if you have any questions, I will invite everyone for a quick discussion before we wrap up. Any questions? All right, well then, we’ll end this session early and maybe we’ll proceed to next main session. So there are a few pens and brochures. Feel free to take them for as a reminder.