CDC to Extend Partnership Supporting Disease Monitoring, Response

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and software company Palantir Technologies Inc. announced an extension of their 10-year partnership to address outbreak response and disease surveillance through the Data Collation and Integration for Public Health Event Response (DCIPHER) Program.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), DCIPHER “is a cloud-based platform used across CDC programs, in the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), by other federal partners, and by state, local, tribal, and territorial public health jurisdictions to collect, collate, share, and link multiple sources of public health, outbreak, and event response data. It is designed to facilitate data interpretation and to inform public health decisions.”

DCIPHER has been used to handle foodborne illness outbreaks, counter Ebola, as well as manage respiratory, anthrax, and bacterial special pathogens. Additionally, the program helps address genomics-specific data challenges. Programs currently utilizing DCIPHER include the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), the System for Enteric Disease Response, Investigation, and Coordination (SEDRIC), and the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) within the CDC’s Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases.

Groups using DCIPHER leverage Palantir's Foundry platform to integrate data, conduct analysis, and create operational workflows for public health needs.  

"Beyond COVID, by incorporating innovative genomic workflows into traditional public health surveillance, CDC is building upon its foundational investments in a modernized technology infrastructure," said William Kassler, MD, chief medical officer for the US Government at Palantir, in the press release.

Palantir Foundry is also used by several other federal health agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.

This partnership’s expansion comes alongside the launch of the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA).

CFA seeks to improve outbreak and public health threat response by using infectious disease modeling and analytics to enable timely, effective decision-making by leaders at all levels of government. CFA also aims to develop a program for providing infectious disease event insights to the public to inform individual decision-making.

Currently, CFA is attempting to build an outbreak analytics team with experts from multiple disciplines to improve the development of data for trend prediction and emergency decision-making guidance. CFA is also hiring communication experts to assist with information sharing across public health partners and the public.

CFA was funded through $200 million from the American Rescue Plan Act. Additionally, the CDC has awarded $26 million to academic and federal institutions to improve modeling and forecasting methodologies.