Google Announces Global Disease Monitoring Plan
Larry Brilliant, who last week was named director of the new Google philanthropic division, has announced plans to form an organization that will monitor and detect early signs of "emerging global health crises," the Wall Street Journal reports.
Brilliant made the announcement at a conference in California. The organization, tentatively called the International Networked System for Total Early Disease Protection, will cost $10 million to launch and might include Sun Microsystems, as well as several venture capital companies.
Brilliant, who will help launch the organization but will not oversee day-to-day operations, said he has entered discussions with the Canadian government about the potential integration of the organization with a similar group in Canada. Such an organization is necessary because "you can't stop what you don't know is there," Brilliant said (Buckman, Wall Street Journal, 2/27).