Yesterday’s meeting at the White House on H1N1 preparedness focused heavily on openness and information sharing. Officials and experts talked about how policy impacts the ability to share information and how it can be modified to better facilitate it, how engagement at all levels of the government and with the private sector will improve access to needed information, and how new surveillance techniques can be used to help thwart a pandemic.

Dr. Mike McDonald talking at the meeting.

The group identified its main goals, beginning with the short term goal of developing a set of anonymous data points that can be used to monitor cases of H1N1 flu publicly, followed by developing tools to effectively communicate this information. Their last – and main – goal is to get this information to the government and other agencies helping to treat flu cases and possible infection points as well as with the public at large.

Also discussed at the meeting was the “Race to Resilience: Pandemic Information Sharing Initiative,” which aims to improve preparedness through information sharing and collaboration between the private sector and all levels of government. Chris Allen, a CTO of the Department of Homeland Security, spoke about the initiative and of the findings of several groups looking at how to best address these two approaches. It was also announced that the initiative will deliver a plan to Aneesh Chopra, the federal CTO, on September 1 laying out a plan on how to achieve, part of which includes how an open source framework can facilitate the collaboration.

I’ll write more on the pandemic preparedness happening at the White House next week, as it’s clear that a lot is moving there.