Independently, strong SDOs are the lynchpin of responding to future pandemics.

Scott Cadzow and Suno Wood, “The role of SDOs in developing standards for ICT to mitigate the impact of a pandemic,” European Telecommunications Standards Institute, 05-xx-2020, https://standict.eu/sites/default/files/2020-10/etsi_wp33_eHealth_standard_role_pandemic%281%29.pdf

COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019) is a particularly aggressive form of coronavirus discovered in 2019 that has rapidly spread across the human population of the planet, becoming classified by the World Health Organisation as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020 (in short it was recognised as a pandemic in late January 2020 only 1 month after its official recognition). The virulence of COVID-19 is 2 to 2½ times more than that of seasonal flu and its mortality rate is significantly higher, with a hospitalisation rate an order of magnitude higher again. This is not a mild pandemic, it is a serious, often lethal, health condition, the impact of which is seriously detrimental to social and economic life across the world.

This short paper acts to identify a "call to arms" to Standards Development Organisations (SDOs) and their constituent members to ensure that when the next pandemic arrives we can rely on greater harmonization of the supply chain. As an SDO in the ICT domain ETSI is obviously a key party in the chain, but it is obvious that ETSI cannot solve the global supply chain necessary to the protection of the health of the global population by itself. Rather ETSI is one of many hundreds of partners who must come together to identify and carry out their responsibilities in defining appropriate ICT solutions.

ICT today, has its foundations in data. ICT has passed many of the hurdles of a developing technology of achieving reliability and interoperability, and has now moved to become largely utilitarian. In much the same way that society has learnt to expect electricity on demand, and clean water on demand, ICT capabilities are now expected to be available on demand. Driving this utility to social good at this time is what this White Paper is all about.

Pandemics are rare but even rarer is a health crisis that affects every citizen of our modern, interconnected world leading to global, economic crisis. Far reaching political decisions are being made and changed daily. These are supported by data supplied by communications systems and advanced medical technology. But this has not been enough. It is vital that we learn lessons from the experiences of today so that we can better tackle the pandemic of tomorrow. There will be one, it is simply a question of time, and how we will respond.