PANDEM-2 Feature: Horizon Europe Success Story

PANDEM-2 is delighted to have been recently featured as a success story on the Horizon Europe (Irish National Support Network) website and newsletter under Cluster 3: Civil Security for Society.

Project coordinator, Prof. Máire Connolly spoke to Anne Marie Daly about how PANDEM-2 is working to ensure a coherent EU response. Prof. Connolly highlights the value of EU-funding and being involved in such projects as enables pan-European and cross-sector collaboration.

“The ability to work across sectors in a multidisciplinary manner is so positive. Instead of being siloed in your domain, you get to bring in other domains to your specialty, and you are dealing with legal, ethical and communications issues. We really see the value of building those bridges, sharing skills, and harmonising our approach to pandemic management.”

Explaining the latest technical outputs of PANDEM-2 including its Dashboard for pandemic management and surveillance, Prof. Connolly says:

“Our pandemic platform can now be used to create scenarios of a ‘disease X’ outbreak with a certain case attack rate,” explains Connolly. “For example, we could say 10 cases arrived in Brussels and they’re isolated at the airport, and there are four cases introduced to Ireland and 35 into Paris, and then you play it out over two days. The first tabletop exercise was held in Berlin in June 2022, focusing on an Ebola outbreak in the EU, which looked at communications, data management, medical evacuation, border controls and other security issues.”

To read the full article here or to find out more about the outputs of PANDEM-2 click here.

The Irish National Support Network for Horizon Europe is led by Enterprise Ireland, the government organisation responsible for the development and growth of Irish enterprises in world markets. The network works with Ireland’s researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs to help them compete for and win funding from the European Union to advance their research and innovation ambitions.