Participatory Surveillance Based on Crowdsourcing During the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Using the Guardians of Health Platform: Descriptive Study.
BACKGROUND
With the evolution of digital media, areas such as public health are adding new platforms to complement traditional systems of epidemiological surveillance. Participatory surveillance and digital epidemiology have become innovative tools for the construction of epidemiological landscapes with citizens' participation, improving traditional sources of information. Strategies such as these promote the timely detection of warning signs for outbreaks and epidemics in the region.


OBJECTIVE
This study aims to describe the participatory surveillance platform Guardians of Health, which was used in a project conducted during the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and officially used by the Brazilian Ministry of Health for the monitoring of outbreaks and epidemics.


METHODS
This is a descriptive study carried out using secondary data from Guardians of Health available in a public digital repository. Based on syndromic signals, the information subsidy for decision making by policy makers and health managers becomes more dynamic and assertive. This type of information source can be used as an early route to understand the epidemiological scenario.


RESULTS
The main result of this research was demonstrating the use of the participatory surveillance platform as an additional source of information for the epidemiological surveillance performed in Brazil during a mass gathering. The platform Guardians of Health had 7848 users who generated 12,746 reports about their health status. Among these reports, the following were identified: 161 users with diarrheal syndrome, 68 users with respiratory syndrome, and 145 users with rash syndrome.


CONCLUSIONS
It is hoped that epidemiological surveillance professionals, researchers, managers, and workers become aware of, and allow themselves to use, new tools that improve information management for decision making and knowledge production. This way, we may follow the path for a more intelligent, efficient, and pragmatic disease control system.
['Leal Neto|Onicio|O|0000-0001-5785-1867', 'Cruz|Oswaldo|O|0000-0002-3289-3195', 'Albuquerque|Jones|J|0000-0001-8313-1687', 'Nacarato de Sousa|Mariana|M|0000-0002-1449-9450', 'Smolinski|Mark|M|0000-0002-5713-8241', 'Pessoa Cesse|Eduarda Ângela|EÂ|0000-0001-5745-3981', 'Libel|Marlo|M|0000-0002-0019-1279', 'Vieira de Souza|Wayner|W|0000-0002-0939-9332']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D000368:Aged D000369:Aged, 80 and over D001938:Brazil D002648:Child D063045:Crowdsourcing D004813:Epidemiology D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D011159:Population Surveillance D015397:Program Evaluation D013177:Sports
participatory surveillance epidemiology digital disease detection disease surveillance health innovation infectious diseases mobile phone pandemics