The CSIC–IFISC partner leads the Epidemiology use case (WP14) within project, the team has launched Epidemiradar, a citizen science platform designed to monitor influenza and COVID-19 in Spain, aiming to expand its network of volunteers and improve the tracking of respiratory diseases.
Every year, thousands of people in Spain experience mild flu-like symptoms without seeking medical care, leaving many cases unrecorded. Epidemiradar aims to bridge this information gap by encouraging citizens nationwide to voluntarily share their health status through epidemiradar.es
After a short registration process and an initial questionnaire, participants receive a weekly email to report whether they have any symptoms. The anonymised and aggregated responses are displayed through interactive maps, offering a real time view of the spread of respiratory symptoms by province and region.
Coordinated by José J. Ramasco, researcher at IFISC (CSIC-UIB), the project integrates the collected data into the secure data analysis environments developed by EOSC-SIESTA, enabling advanced epidemiological modelling and analysis in a privacy preserving way. This use case demonstrates how SIESTA’s infrastructure can guarantee secure and compliant access to sensitive data, supporting data driven public health decisions and improving our understanding of infectious disease dynamics.
Epidemiradar also serves as the Spanish node of the European Influenzanet network, active in more than ten countries, and stands as a concrete example of how SIESTA technologies can be applied to public health monitoring and citizen participation in science.