The role of pharmaceutical industry in building resilient health system.

Objectives: This study explores the interrelationship among the current sustainability agenda of the pharmaceutical industry, based on the United Nation sustainable development goals (SDGs), the elements of the Joint External Evaluation (JEE) tool, and the triad components of the One Health approach. Methods: A cross-walk exercise was conducted to identify commonalities among SDGs, JEE assessment tool, and One Health approach. An in-depth study of 10 global pharmaceutical firms' corporate sustainability reports and COVID-19 response plan for 2019-2020 was also conducted. Results: The result of the exercise showed the existence of a direct and indirect relationship among the SDGs, elements of JEE assessment tool, and One Health approach. For example, both no poverty (SDG 1) and zero hunger (SDG 2) are linked with food safety targets under the JEE and with human and animal health under the One Health approach. Conclusion: This study adds a new dimension emphasizing the possibility of tailoring the pharmaceutical industry's activities under the sustainability agenda to strengthen global health security while remaining consistent with the One Health approach.

COVID-19 Prevention Systems within Hardware and Software Design Computer Science Courses

This paper proposes pandemic support system design exercises from both hardware and software perspective as constituent part of higher education computer science courses. Two case studies in context of computer science and automation study programmes at University of Niš, Faculty of Electronic Engineering in Serbia ae covered: Intelligent Information Systems and Microcontroller Programming. In case of the first one, the topics cover information system implementation relying on Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) technology with presence of machine learning elements provided by Weka API, so smart vaccination process support information system is presented as example. On the other side, the focus on the second course is on PIC16 family microcontrollers and RTOS-based system implementation using CCS C compiler and presented example represents control unit for indoor coronavirus safety control. © 2022 IEEE.

The Global Health Security index and Joint External Evaluation score for health preparedness are not correlated with countries' COVID-19 detection response time and mortality outcome.

Global Health Security Index (GHSI) and Joint External Evaluation (JEE) are two well-known health security and related capability indices. We hypothesised that countries with higher GHSI or JEE scores would have detected their first COVID-19 case earlier, and would experience lower mortality outcome compared to countries with lower scores. We evaluated the effectiveness of GHSI and JEE in predicting countries' COVID-19 detection response times and mortality outcome (deaths/million). We used two different outcomes for the evaluation: (i) detection response time, the duration of time to the first confirmed case detection (from 31st December 2019 to 20th February 2020 when every country's first case was linked to travel from China) and (ii) mortality outcome (deaths/million) until 11th March and 1st July 2020, respectively. We interpreted the detection response time alongside previously published relative risk of the importation of COVID-19 cases from China. We performed multiple linear regression and negative binomial regression analysis to evaluate how these indices predicted the actual outcome. The two indices, GHSI and JEE were strongly correlated (r = 0.82), indicating a good agreement between them. However, both GHSI (r = 0.31) and JEE (r = 0.37) had a poor correlation with countries' COVID-19-related mortality outcome. Higher risk of importation of COVID-19 from China for a given country was negatively correlated with the time taken to detect the first case in that country (adjusted R2 = 0.63-0.66), while the GHSI and JEE had minimal predictive value. In the negative binomial regression model, countries' mortality outcome was strongly predicted by the percentage of the population aged 65 and above (incidence rate ratio (IRR): 1.10 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.01-1.21) while overall GHSI score (IRR: 1.01 (95% CI: 0.98-1.01)) and JEE (IRR: 0.99 (95% CI: 0.96-1.02)) were not significant predictors. GHSI and JEE had lower predictive value for detection response time and mortality outcome due to COVID-19. We suggest introduction of a population healthiness parameter, to address demographic and comorbidity vulnerabilities, and reappraisal of the ranking system and methods used to obtain the index based on experience gained from this pandemic.