Getting started with EIOS

Last update: November 2020

Welcome to the Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) Initiative!

The EIOS initiative is a unique collaboration between WHO and various stakeholders that brings together
new and existing initiatives, networks and systems to create a unified all-hazards One Health approach to
early detection using the EIOS system.

This document introduces the EIOS system interface to familiarize yourself with the system.

On your first login, you will be brought to the monitoring page as shown in the next figure. If you have any
issue logging in, please contact your Community Manager, your WHO Regional EIOS Coordinator or focal
point. If you don’t know who they are, please contact eios@who.int.

Note that in the next pages, you can “press CTRL” and “click” on the hyperlinks to be redirected to the relevant
section of the Reference manual and get additional information.

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You can find here which Community you are in. If you are a member of multiple communities, this box will contain a
dropdown menu which allows you to switch between your communities.

The Documents page is where you can share documents with others in your community. You can also find there
the User guide, which explains how to use the EIOS system, and the FAQ which provides answers to many of the
questions you may have about the EIOS initiative and system.

The Dashboards dropdown menu gives you access the Big Screen Map and other available dashboards. The Big
Screen Map page is a visualization of some of the most recent articles about selected events.
The Help and feedback dropdown menu gives access to the Reference Manual, which provides in-depth
instructions for all the buttons and functions as well as information on revisions and additions to the EIOS system.
Under this menu, you also have access to the Feedback page, which allows you to share comments, report a
technical issue or ask a question.
The Monitoring page is the page you will mainly use. You can view a list of articles in the system (based on
selection criteria), navigate through article pages, and then apply additional search and filter criteria as desired. The
yellow line under its name shows that this is the page you are currently viewing.

You can use the Latest Activities tab to see how many articles were read, flagged, pinned by people in your
community or team or to see which user has opened, modified or closed a board.

You can use the Sources tab to check whether the sources you want to make sure are included in your community
are there and how many articles are coming through from each source.

The Manage Communication tab allows you to search for a specific communication across all the boards to which
you have access, read the message, see the attached articles and reply.

The Explore tab is the main tab used for media monitoring activities. From the Monitoring page you can view and
filter articles, comment on articles and create communications. The grey box around the name shows that this is the
tab you are currently viewing.

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You can see here the latest communications related to a board by clicking on the arrow to expand this section. You
can create a new message and have the option to attach an article to your communication by selecting the article
using the Export icon first (see number 26 on the next page). You might also use the comments section, for
example to leave notes about changes made to the board to let others know.

A board is a saved set of filters. You can select an existing board by clicking on select board or click on the +
icon to create a new one.

For example, imagine you are a member of a media monitoring team and have been tasked with conducting routine
monitoring for the priority diseases in country X You would first create a new board by clicking on the icon, fill the
fields in the form, and save your board. At this point, the board will still include all articles because no filters have
been set yet. The second step would be to set some filters according to your board rationale to narrow the article
selection.

You could set a time period filter, for example the last 24 hours or the last 1 week depending on how frequently the
team will be monitoring.

You would set the categories to the match the priority diseases of the country X. Category filters include identified
key words and exclusion criteria in multiple languages to help further refine articles identified as related to a
particular disease/hazard.

You would set the mentioned countries to the name of country X.

You have the option to filter articles based on their language of publication.

You could also decide to select specific sources (for e.g. official sources only), if needed.

You could additionally use a text search to refine further the selection, if needed.

Finally, save changes. Note that unsaved changes to board filters will only affect your experience with the board.
Once you have saved changes to the board filters, they will affect all users on that board.

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Once a board is selected, the articles matching the applied filters will be displayed on the article panel on the right
side of your screen. Each article row shows selected information and allows you to interact with the specific article.
Article titles will appear in their original language of publication.

A map is visible above the Article rows when the Map switch is turned on. The map displays locations mentioned in
the articles found below the map. The map can be useful to select a subset of articles based on a location, to apply
a Spatial filter by drawing an area of interest on the map, or to produce a map to include in a report.

The current built-in translation tool translates a few languages to English. One main advantage of the current
translation functionality is with the text search. However, to translate the whole content on the article page, we
recommend that you use an external translation tool, such as the Google Translate extension. You can find more
information on how to install some options in the translation section of the Reference manual.

You can filter and sort the articles displayed on the article panel according to the options listed in the Reference
manual.

When you hover anywhere over an article row, two icons will appear. Clicking on this icon will open the full
article on the original publication website (external to EIOS). Clicking on this icon will open the Detail view in
EIOS, which allows you to read the article, obtain additional information (language, mentioned countries, locations,
associated categories, etc.) and interact with the selected article in EIOS ( pinning to any board, commenting,
highlighting key words which triggered the category label, etc.).

On the article row, you can flag articles of interest for future reference by clicking on the flag icon. Flags are visible
across the community – your flags will be yellow, and everyone else’s flag will be grey. Flags belong to individual
users, and an article can be flagged by multiple users at the same time.

You can also pin an article of interest to any board for future reference by clicking on the pin icon. Pinning is shared
across all members of the community. This means that if an article has been pinned to a board by someone else in
your community and you unpin it, it will be unpinned for everyone.

To create a report, first mark the desired article(s) by clicking the export icon. Then click on Export articles at the
bottom of the article panel, select the template, and generate a Microsoft Word document.

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