RSV is associated with substantial disease burden in young children and the elderly and causes 118,000 estimated deaths worldwide. Healthcare authorities around the globe are in need for better monitoring strategies to assess the RSV impact on all infants and other vulnerable groups, as well as on healthcare systems. The PROMISE project is working to fulfil this need by developing an RSV surveillance platform which can help anticipating when the virus is expected to be circulating so that General practitioners (GPs) and hospitals are better prepared to control potential outbreaks.

The surveillance platform developed, will promote the generation and utilisation of local / national data to understand impact of RSV burden on healthcare systems and the various population risk groups.

Strengthening epidemiological and virological surveillance in Europe

PROMISE endeavours to share all data generated as part of routine RSV surveillance by national public health agencies and make available regular reports based on surveillance data to the community. This is essential to improving awareness on respiratory infections in the community, building public confidence, and guiding the development of therapeutic and preventive solutions in the long term.

The project is making a quantum leap in this area by establishing a European surveillance platform to monitor seasonal RSV epidemics. PROMISE will collect high-quality surveillance data, including age-specific RSV data and make it available to health authorities and policy makers to assist them in their decision-making for the control of RSV outbreaks, managing the RSV impact in vulnerable populations and planning of national immunisation programmes.

Further to this PROMISE is assisting public health authorities in preparing for future RSV product assessment by:

Preparing and publishing a Fortnightly Electronic Bulletin on RSV activity in the European Union and neighbouring countries to make the data easily accessible by all stakeholders.

Harmonising RSV detection and characterization methods and External Quality Assessments of RSV diagnostics techniques by establishing a Network of RSV Laboratories in Europe (RSVLabNet).

Assisting public health authorities in the development and monitoring of novel immunisations and therapeutics by providing effectiveness endpoints and developing post-marketing effectiveness and safety study designs for measuring product effectiveness.