Overcoming the challenges of using automated technologies for public health evidence synthesis.

Many organisations struggle to keep pace with public health evidence due to the volume of published literature and length of time it takes to conduct literature reviews. New technologies that help automate parts of the evidence synthesis process can help conduct reviews more quickly and efficiently to better provide up-to-date evidence for public health decision making. To date, automated approaches have seldom been used in public health due to significant barriers to their adoption. In this Perspective, we reflect on the findings of a study exploring experiences of adopting automated technologies to conduct evidence reviews within the public health sector. The study, funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, consisted of a literature review and qualitative data collection from public health organisations and researchers in the field. We specifically focus on outlining the challenges associated with the adoption of automated approaches and potential solutions and actions that can be taken to mitigate these. We explore these in relation to actions that can be taken by tool developers (e.g. improving tool performance and transparency), public health organisations (e.g. developing staff skills, encouraging collaboration) and funding bodies/the wider research system (e.g. researchers, funding bodies, academic publishers and scholarly journals).

Data Collection and Sharing for Pathogen Surveillance: Making Sense of a Fragmented Global System.

RAND Europe was commissioned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation to conduct a study on pathogen surveillance and current initiatives. The study aims to provide an overview of the pathogen surveillance space internationally and the stakeholders involved, as well as to understand the strengths and weaknesses of different initiatives, the challenges of pathogen surveillance and how they have been addressed, and how data has been used to inform public health decision making. To do this, a scoping review of pathogen surveillance initiatives was conducted, and ten case studies were developed and selected for further review following a workshop attended by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and RAND Europe study team. Interviews were conducted with individuals involved in pathogen surveillance initiatives to gather additional information to develop case studies, and expert interviews addressed gaps in the pathogen surveillance space and models that would be helpful in filling these gaps.

Public engagement with genomics.

As detailed in its flagship report, Genome UK, the UK government recognises the vital role that broad public engagement across whole populations plays in the field of genomics. However, there is limited evidence about how to do this at scale. Most public audiences do not feel actively connected to science, are oftenunsure of the relevance to their lives and rarely talk to their family and friends about; we term this dis-connection a 'disengaged public audience'. We use a narrative review to explore: (i) UK attitudes towards genetics and genomics and what may influence reluctance to engage with these topics; (ii) innovative public engagement approaches that have been used to bring diverse public audiences into conversations about the technology. Whilst we have found some novel engagement methods that have used participatory arts, film, social media and deliberative methods, there is no clear agreement on best practice. We did not find a consistently used, evidence-based strategy for delivering public engagement about genomics across diverse and broad populations, nor a specific method that is known to encourage engagement from groups that have historically felt (in terms of perception) and been (in reality) excluded from genomic research. We argue there is a need for well-defined, tailor-made engagement strategies that clearly articulate the audience, the purpose and the proposed impact of the engagement intervention. This needs to be coupled with robust evaluation frameworks to build the evidence-base for population-level engagement strategies.