The launch of the EU Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA): Improving global pandemic preparedness?

The crowded global health landscape has been joined by the European Union Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA). HERA will assume four broad areas of responsibility: horizon scanning for major health threats; research and development; support for capacity to manufacture drugs, vaccines, and equipment; and procuring and stockpiling key medical countermeasures. In this Health Reform Monitor article, we outline the reform process and describe HERA's structure and responsibilities, explore issues that arise from the creation of this new organisation, and suggest options for collaboration with existing bodies in Europe and beyond. The COVID-19 pandemic and other infectious disease outbreaks have shown the need to treat health as a cross-border issue, and there is now a broad consensus that greater direction and coordination at the European level is needed. This ambition has been matched with a considerable increase in EU funding to tackle cross-border health threats, and HERA can be used to deploy this funding in an effective manner. Yet this is contingent upon clearly defining its role and responsibilities vis-à-vis existing agencies to reduce redundancies.

Financial and Investment Predicates of Security of Hotel Real Estate Development

The article examines the level of safety of investments in hotel real estate, and also develops general recommendations regarding its provision. It is noted that the safety of investments is an integral concept, and its achievement of optimal indicators forms the investment attractiveness of the micro-and macroeconomic environment. It was found that the investment potential of hotel real estate has been decreasing since 2019 due to unavoidable factors, in particular, the coronavirus pandemic and large-scale mil-itary aggression on the territory of Ukraine, which caused significant risks of financial capital losses. A negative forecast regarding the level of investment attractiveness of the hotel sector was found, verified on the basis of the method of scanning horizon, which is aggravated by the uncertainty of the war timeframe and the impossibility of predicting the scale of the destruction of social and tourist infrastructure. Globalization and digitalization of all aspects of the economy make it possible to form priority directions for the formation of safe relations regarding the investment of hotel projects adapted to the new conditions of the national economy. The relevant factors determining the conditions of investment in hotel real estate were worked out by the method of scanning the horizon. Therefore, this study aims to assess the conditions and risks of an investment in hotel real estate and to develop potential innovative models of interaction between the inves-tor and the recipient of the investment (a subject of the hotel business), which will increase the attractiveness of hotel real estate for investment. The relevance of the above provisions is confirmed by the prospects of restoration of the hotel business after the end of martial law in Ukraine

A rapid priority setting exercise combining existing, emergent evidence with stakeholder knowledge identified broad topic uncertainties.

OBJECTIVE: The project aimed to rapidly identify priority topic uncertainties as a first step to identify future systematic review questions of pertinence to key international faecal incontinence (FI) stakeholders (patients, carers, healthcare professionals, policy makers and voluntary, community or social enterprise representatives). The paper aim is to share our methods, experience and learning with other groups planning to deliver a rapid priority setting exercise. STUDY DESIGN: An evidence gap map incorporated three evidence streams: emerging evidence identified through horizon scanning; existing evidence identified through systematic searches of bibliographic databases; and FI stakeholder insights collected through an international survey. The evidence gap map was presented during an online workshop with stakeholders, where they shared their expertise to expand, refine and rank topic uncertainties using ideation techniques, focus group discussions, consensus techniques and online polling. RESULTS: The multi-step methods used to deliver this priority-setting exercise resulted in identification of broad priority topic uncertainties. The methods appear to have high acceptability and engagement with participants but await full evaluation. CONCLUSIONS: This project successfully followed robust methodology, building upon frameworks from published priority setting and evidence gap mapping projects whilst incorporating strong patient and public involvement components.

Food fraud and mitigating strategies of UK food supply chain during COVID-19.

Covid-19 had shown the vulnerability of the food supply chain and fraudsters may take advantage of the pandemic whilst the population needed a continuous supply of safe and quality food. The lack of monitoring and policing in the food supply chain may encourage fraudsters to upscale their operations. Previous studies had warned of a surge in fraudulent products due to COVID-19. This raised the question on whether food fraud had increased during the pandemic? This study aims to investigate food fraud during COVID-19 and how the food supply chain develops mitigating strategies against fraudulent activities. A mixed-method approach including survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted among UK food businesses. Two hundred and two agri-food businesses responded to the survey and 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted. The majority of the food businesses did not experience an increase of food fraud activities during COVID-19. Two thematic domains and ten sub-themes were identified from the data set. There was a heightened sense of anticipation and preparation for increased fraudulent activities during the pandemic. The main risk mitigating strategies included horizon scanning; developing and maintaining supplier relationship and assurance; understanding product characteristics, testing capabilities, conducting vulnerability assessments and training. Practical and cost-effective strategies for small and medium food businesses were recommended. This is the first empirical study on food fraud and mitigating strategies of the UK food supply chain during the pandemic. Our findings provide evidence for informing the policies and practices of the food regulatory authorities as well as best practices to protect the UK food supply chain against food fraud during exogenous shocks like COVID-19.

From adoration to damnation? Exploring role of media in shaping low-carbon economy in times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The leverage of the public narrative created and maintained by the media as a highly influential social actor is decisive, but also sensitive, in bringing about the energy transition and advancing towards a low-carbon economy. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has potential to slow down and deform the public acceptance of the above-mentioned processes as it is likely that the priorities of individual governments will be revisited and tailored to tackle the ongoing health crisis. We are replying to such a threat with this study that aims to reflect on the immense role of media in shaping a low-carbon economy in transitional economies. We are using Poland as an illustrative example to demonstrate how wide, colourful, and sometimes even confusing the low-carbon narrative might be. By means of employing the horizon scanning of the diverse types of media, we detected that media overwhelmingly affect and deform the ongoing discussions about the nuances of energy transition and benefits a low-carbon economy. We argue that political preferences of individual journalists (and publishing houses) in Poland tend to influence the style, depth, extent, and quality how the topic is covered and narrated.

COVID-19 Impact on Diagnostic Innovations: Emerging Trends and Implications.

Diagnostic testing remains the backbone of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) response, supporting containment efforts to mitigate the outbreak. The severity of this crisis and increasing capacity issues associated with polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based testing, accelerated the development of diagnostic solutions to meet demands for mass testing. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Innovation Observatory is the national horizon scanning organization in England. Since March, the Innovation Observatory has applied advanced horizon scanning methodologies and tools to compile a diagnostic landscape, based upon data captured for molecular (MDx) and immunological (IDx) based diagnostics (commercialized/in development), for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2. In total we identified and tracked 1608 diagnostics, produced by 1045 developers across 54 countries. Our dataset shows the speed and scale in which diagnostics were produced and provides insights into key periods of development and shifts in trends between MDx and IDx solutions as the pandemic progressed. Stakeholders worldwide required timely and detailed intelligence to respond to major challenges, including testing capacity and regulatory issues. Our intelligence assisted UK stakeholders with assessing priorities and mitigation options throughout the pandemic. Here we present the global evolution of diagnostic innovations devised to meet changing needs, their regulation and trends across geographical regions, providing invaluable insights into the complexity of the COVID-19 phenomena.

Big data augmentated business trend identification: the case of mobile commerce.

Identifying and monitoring business and technological trends are crucial for innovation and competitiveness of businesses. Exponential growth of data across the world is invaluable for identifying emerging and evolving trends. On the other hand, the vast amount of data leads to information overload and can no longer be adequately processed without the use of automated methods of extraction, processing, and generation of knowledge. There is a growing need for information systems that would monitor and analyse data from heterogeneous and unstructured sources in order to enable timely and evidence-based decision-making. Recent advancements in computing and big data provide enormous opportunities for gathering evidence on future developments and emerging opportunities. The present study demonstrates the use of text-mining and semantic analysis of large amount of documents for investigating in business trends in mobile commerce (m-commerce). Particularly with the on-going COVID-19 pandemic and resultant social isolation, m-commerce has become a large technology and business domain with ever growing market potentials. Thus, our study begins with a review of global challenges, opportunities and trends in the development of m-commerce in the world. Next, the study identifies critical technologies and instruments for the full utilization of the potentials in the sector by using the intelligent big data analytics system based on in-depth natural language processing utilizing text-mining, machine learning, science bibliometry and technology analysis. The results generated by the system can be used to produce a comprehensive and objective web of interconnected technologies, trends, drivers and barriers to give an overview of the whole landscape of m-commerce in one business intelligence (BI) data mart diagram.

Multi-Criteria-Decision-Analysis (MCDA) for the Horizon Scanning of Health Innovations an Application to COVID 19 Emergency.

Aim: In this article, we aim to present a tool for the early assessment of medical technologies. This evaluation system was designed and implemented by the National Centre for HTA and the National Centre for Innovative Technologies of the Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Italy, in order to respond to an institutional commitment within the "Health Technologies Assessment Team" that was established to face the huge demand for the evaluation of Health Technologies during the pandemic event caused by COVID-19, with a smart and easy-to-use framework. Methods: Horizon scanning was conducted through a brief assessment carried out according to the multicriteria decision analysis methodology. Each HTA domain was attributed a score according to a pros/cons and opportunities/threats system, derived from evidence in the literature. Scores were weighted according to different perspectives. Scores were presented in a Cartesian graph showing the positioning according to the potential value and the perceived risk associated with the technology. Results: Two case studies regarding the early assessment were reported, concerning two specific technologies: an individual protection device and a contact tracking system.