Digital dashboards as tools for regional influenza monitoring

Yearly seasonal epidemics of influenza, an acute viral respiratory disease, pose a substantial health burden on all age groups worldwide. (1) In addition, zoonotic influenza viruses circulating in animal populations cause occasional infections in humans. Influenza is a priority disease for regional surveillance in the World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific Region, where several zoonotic influenza viruses have infected humans in recent years. (2) Effective risk assessment for influenza is supported through the use of multiple sources of surveillance information. However, bringing together different streams of data and information for analysis can be challenging. Online visualization and analytics tools help to synthesize and disseminate various data sources for risk assessment and public health action. Herein we describe digital dashboards built by the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific to share regional influenza data