European CDC and HISP UiO Collaborate to Strengthen Disease Surveillance in Europe
Eight EU/EEA pilot countries will begin using the DHIS2-based Epi+ platform starting in June 2027, with the goal of enabling public health authorities to better monitor, manage and respond to health events at the national level.
The HISP Centre at the University of Oslo (HISP UiO) is partnering with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) on Epi+, a DHIS2-based platform for event-based disease surveillance that is configurable to meet country-specific needs.
The ECDC describes Epi+ as “a multi-hazard, open-source, event-based surveillance platform for EU/EEA countries that enables public health authorities to monitor, manage and respond to health events at the national level.” It provides “a structured, digital environment for national public health authorities to detect signals, assess risks, coordinate responses and document outcomes, both before and alongside the EU-level exchange of events.”
Epi+ complements the existing EpiPulse Events system that enables real-time data sharing between ECDC and EU/EEA member states by providing a tool that enables event reporting and coordination at the national level, which has been a common gap.
“Countries have solid routines for surveillance, but not for event surveillance. Through our work with Member States, we identified a clear need for a national tool that does what ECDC does at European level. Many countries asked to join the pilot, and Epi+ is our response: a platform that helps public health teams collect and manage event information, from the field to the national level.” Emiliano Farinella, Project Manager for Epi+, ECDC
The initial platform scope includes:
- Public health portal: A national entry point for health event management, documentation and situational awareness, accessible to authorised users across institutions.
- Event management: Detection, tracking and documentation of public health events, including situation awareness, collaboration across sectors and institutions, epidemiological reports.
- Risk assessment and response: Structured tools to support national risk assessment processes and coordinate public health risk assessment and response measures across disease groups and sectors.
- Notifications: Configurable alert and notification mechanisms to ensure timely information reaches the right stakeholders at national and sub-national levels.
“Epi+ offers a new model for sharing public health data,” Farinella said. “National systems can exchange information and work together, each country keeps full control of its own data, and one platform supports several surveillance applications. It gives central and local authorities a secure channel to share information on emerging threats, and it connects the institutions responsible for different hazards: infectious disease outbreaks, foodborne illness, chemical incidents, and environmental events such as heatwaves and floods. As the pilot countries prepare to launch Epi+ as their national surveillance system, we are taking a significant step towards protecting citizens from health threats.”
The Epi+ design leverages DHIS2’s extensibility features to support custom components that provide a tailored user interface and extended functionalities, and follows DHIS2 principles of being configurable by design, so that national authorities using Epi+ can modify their systems at the country level with no coding required. Building Epi+ on DHIS2 gives countries the benefits of a proven, globally deployed open-source platform that is already used for disease surveillance around the world, and supports ECDC’s ambition to release Epi+ as a digital public good.
The DHIS2 core software will also be strengthened through this collaboration. To support the requirements of Epi+ to manage access control for each specific epidemiological event, HISP UiO is enhancing the granularity of DHIS2 access control mechanisms. This will allow per-record data access control through the DHIS2 core platform.
The Epi+ system is being developed with nine pilot countries: Croatia, Greece, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, and Slovenia. These countries represent a mixture of different national contexts that will help shape Epi+ into a system that can meet the needs of all EU/EEA member states. Implementation of Epi+ in pilot countries will begin in June 2027.
The number of pilot countries reflects strong interest in Epi+ among EU/EEA Member States. “The response from countries went well beyond our expectations,” Farinella said. Project Manager for Epi+ at ECDC. “Countries see in Epi+ a tool they need now, and they want to help shape it.”
The collaboration between HISP UiO and ECDC on Epi+ has been ongoing since 2025. The ECDC team presented Epi+ at the 2026 DHIS2 Annual Conference, and a team from HISP UiO participated in the Training of Trainers for Epi+ pilot countries held in Rome in November 2026. HISP UiO will continue to work with ECDC to support the training, rollout, and piloting of the system in 2027.
Learn more about Epi+ on the ECDC website.
Watch the ECDC presentation on Epi+ from the 2026 DHIS2 Annual Conference.
