BioterrorismNorth Carolina’s biothreat warning system receives funding

The North Carolina Bio-Preparedness Collaborative (NCB-Prepared), a project to develop an early warning system to detect biothreats, has received $3 million in funding.

WRAL Tech Wirereports that Representative David Price (D-North Carolina), who is on the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, announced the funding on Wednesday.

The system currently receives and accesses live data and the DHS funding will expand that and refine the system.

The goal of NCB-Prepared project, which is being led by the University of North Carolina, the North Carolina State University, and private businesses, is to develop a statewide system that can detect and alert health officials and first responders within hours of an outbreak indicating a bioterror attack, contagious disease or illness, food-borne illness, and other biothreats.

The system will gather data from human, animal, and environmental sources. The data will be used by state agencies  to provide  first responders and health officials with detailed information on the type of attack and how best  to respond to it.

“By pooling data from systems that currently ‘don’t talk to each other,’ NCB-Prepared will help first responders and health professionals see the whole picture and act decisively to end the threat posed by a health incident or biological or chemical attack,” Price said in a statement. “NCB-Prepared will also give responders the information they need to calibrate the least disruptive, most-effective disaster response possible.”

The project started in 2010 with $5 million from the Homeland Security’s Office of Health Affairs under a cooperative agreement.