Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium, 13 January 2012 — Applied Maths has successfully concluded a public tender (OJ/19/04/2011-PROC/2011/026) launched in April 2011 by the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) and intended to prepare the installation of a European network for molecular typing data, such as Pulsed Field Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE), Multi Locus VNTR Analysis (MLVA), PCR-based ribotyping, spa-typing, etc.

In the last decade, the European Commission has funded as many as 17 dedicated surveillance networks on diverse communicable diseases. One of the objectives of the ECDC is to further develop and harmonize these activities across the European Union. As a result, The European Surveillance System (TESSy), a global repository and reporting system for epidemiological data has been developed. The collaboration with Applied Maths will allow ECDC to address their need for integrating molecular typing data into the EU surveillance system.

The need for a flexible extension of the existing epidemiological platform with molecular data is met very well by the Applied Maths BioNumerics and BioNumerics Advanced Server solutions, both platforms offering powerful analysis and databasing tools combined with customizability and expandibility. Over the next months, Applied Maths consultants will assist ECDC software engineers in linking TESSy to the Applied Maths molecular surveillance software. The new TESSy platform, tightly integrating TESSy and BioNumerics, will acquire and accommodate epidemiological and molecular data from all participating EU member states.

Koen Janssens, CEO at Applied Maths: "We are delighted that the ECDC has selected Applied Maths for this ambitious project. It holds the promise of bringing European surveillance of infectious diseases to a whole new level and therefore we consider it a very important challenge for our company. This collaboration also illustrates that 20 years after its inception, Applied Maths is still setting the standards in epidemiological bioinformatics."