In 2005, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health established a web-based outbreak rapid alert system called Vesuv. The system is used for mandatory outbreak alerts from municipal medical officers, healthcare institutions, and food safety authorities. As of 2013, 1426 outbreaks have been reported, involving 32913 cases. More than half of the outbreaks occurred in healthcare institutions (759 outbreaks, 53·2%). A total of 474 (33·2%) outbreaks were associated with food or drinking water. The web-based rapid alert system has proved to be a helpful tool by enhancing reporting and enabling rapid and efficient information sharing between different authorities at both the local and national levels. It is also an important tool for event-based reporting, as required by the International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005. Collecting information from all the outbreak alerts and reports in a national database is also useful for analysing trends, such as occurrence of certain microorganisms, places or sources of infection, or route of transmission. This can facilitate the identification of specific areas where more general preventive measures are needed.

The monitoring and surveillance of animal diseases is becoming increasinglyimportant to policy-makers in Great Britain particularly given recent incursionsof avian influenza and the emergence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Tomeet this surveillance objective, data from British livestock is collected andanalysed retrospectively on an ongoing basis. However, these data can also beanalysed prospectively within an early detection system which raises alerts tosignificant increases in disease reporting soon after they occur in the field.The feasibility of such an approach has been examined previously forSalmonella. This paper applied the approach to a furthersubset of surveillance data to alert those monitoring disease to increases inpotentially new and emerging diseases. Thus far, the analysis, conducted on aquarterly basis, has proved a useful additional tool in enhanced surveillance byraising alerts to significant increases in several syndromes in both sheep andcattle.