Fostering cross-community collaboration to advance pandemic and epidemic intelligence

Abstract The twelfth session of the WHO Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence Innovation Forum focused on how cross-community collaboration can accelerate progress in pandemic and epidemic intelligence. The session explored how the Collaboratory, a WHO digital initiative connecting diverse communities of practice, fosters co-creation, supports the development of collaborative analytical tools, and strengthens the translation of evidence-base into public health action. Through a combination of short presentations and a panel discussion, the session examined key Collaboratory initiatives, including the Global Repository of Epidemiological Parameters (grEPI), AI-enabled pipelines for evidence synthesis, the Epiverse toolkit for outbreak analysis, and semantic search tools to improve the discoverability of epidemiological resources. Discussions addressed challenges of integration into national public health systems, governance models, sustainability, capacity-building, AI reliability, and ethical use. Across the session a common message emerged: advancing epidemic intelligence requires not only new tools but also sustained collective action, trust, and shared ownership across sectors, disciplines, and regions.