The BioSIRT BLOG - November 2011

Edition 21

Hendra

Hendra is a serious disease. Flying Foxes can carry the virus and occasionally the virus is transferred to horses, dogs, cats, pigs and guinea pigs. People who have close contact with fluids from Hendra infected horses without personal protection equipment are also at risk.

Soon after Hendra killed the first horse in NSW in the recent outbreak, BioSIRT was implemented to record details and assist in managing information associated with the outbreak. The ability of BioSIRT to record a wide range of measures was highlighted with the need for twice daily observations requiring morning and afternoon records for each horse along with body temperature, pulse, respiration, eating, defecation, urination, movement/gait, vision weight shifting, muscular tremors, nasal discharge and sample details when required.

This flexibility is critical in managing various diseases because every incident brings an unpredictable need for recording. In this case, many observations per individual animal over many days until a suspect animal was cleared of the disease.

Standard and customized reports may be used to assist managers and different mapping configurations can be set to enable reporting on all assessed negative properties, not yet assessed, resolved or other statuses or combination required by incident management.

Article and images provided by NSW Department of Primary Industry

What is ABIN?

ABIN is a unique, secure infrastructure platform created to strengthen Australia’s biosecurity research, surveillance, diagnostic and response capability; connecting people and data across the biosecurity continuum.

ABIN was established in 2008 with funding from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) programme. ABIN has a partnership approach, working with the biosecurity community to address gaps in biosecurity infrastructure.

ABIN works with the animal, plant, wildlife, aquatic and human health sectors of biosecurity. The Australian Government, state and territory governments, research organisations, and industry all use ABIN.

How does ABIN work?

ABIN’s services are delivered via Community Spaces. These secure online workspaces allow biosecurity professionals to connect with each other, access data, information and tools, and share experience and know-how.

Community Spaces are created at the request of a stakeholder, to support their research activities. Each Community Space is unique, is tailored to meet individual requirements, and its use is owned and managed by the stakeholder.

Pre-existing databases, tools and information systems can be integrated with the Community Space, and there is potential for new specialised technology to be developed.

ABIN aims to be the glue that holds systems and tools together and the common platform to share them for the benefit of the entire biosecurity continuum.

Get involved
For more information on ABIN.

Article provided by ABIN

BioSIRT Version 3.0 rolled out

The major release of version 3.0 has been finalised. Development took place in May and June this year and deployment of the release occurred in July. Final testing was completed in October with no issues found.

The version 3.0 development concentrates on updating the component software that supports BioSIRT to the latest versions for each. This includes Crystal Reports for report production and MapServer and GeoServer for delivery of mapping as well as a number of other component software applications.

Also, BioSIRT now operates on Windows 2008 Server as an alternative to Windows 2003 Server. Supported browsers for viewing the BioSIRT application have now been expanded to include Internet Explorer versions 7 and 8, and FireFox version 3.0.

The BioSIRT version 3.0 release also included a number of small bug fixes as previously identified by BioSIRT Administrators. Apart from these, there were no major changes to the BioSIRT interface so users will not notice any significant difference when working on their BioSIRT screens under version 3.0.

This update brings BioSIRT up to date with the latest application support and stabilises the foundations on which the application sits. The majority of jurisdictions have now updated their instances to BioSIRT version 3.0 with the remaining jurisdictions in the final preparatory stages of doing so.

Upcoming User and Administrator Training

Administrator Training will be held in Queensland in February 2012. If you are interested in attending please contact your National BioSIRT Standards Committee member or the National Coordination Team. Email Paula Phelan.