GMI charter
The charter was discussed at GMI6 and a revised version will be sent by e-mail to the GMI community. The e-mail will include an invitation to sign up as a GMI member at the GMI website. It will be mandatory to sign up to at least one working group. Only members who have signed up to be active in working groups will be able to vote for the charter and the steering committee and be able to use the Sharepoint site.
It will however be possible to receive information, invitations to meetings etc. only, by subscribing to the GMI newsletter, also found at the GMI website.
6th meeting in Sacramento, USA, 10-11 September 2013
The purpose was to determine a path forward for how to establish a globally distributed system and to follow up on the previous GMI meetings. The report from the meeting will be coordinated by Henry S. Gibbons and will be sent to all participants no later than November 2013.
Contact: Mr. Henry S. Gibbons, henry.s.gibbons.civ@mail.mil
Progress in WG5 Pilot Projects
At the GMI6 meeting WG5 discussed its overall concepts of operations, with special focus on how it will interact and coordinate efforts with the other working groups. In particular, volunteers were identified to serve as liaisons to the other working groups to help coordinate the efforts of the groups. Several projects are already underway that can serve portions of the pilot project role and efforts will be made by WG5 participants to reach out to participants. General principles of pilot project design and execution were discussed, along with ways that WG5 might serve as an exercise control team for a major technical demonstration of the GMI capability.
Contact: Mr. Henry S. Gibbons, henry.s.gibbons.civ@mail.mil
U.S. Nation-wide Genome Sequencing-based Listeria monocytogenes Surveillance
CDC in collaboration with NCBI, FDA, USDA and the nation’s 50 state public health agencies has launched a nation-wide program to evaluate the use of whole genome sequencing (WGS) for real-time surveillance and outbreak detection/investigation of Listeria monocytogenes infections. This proof-of-concept project will be conducted in parallel with standard PulseNet operations and enhanced listeria epidemiology investigations. Surveillance will include isolates and metadata from human infections, food testing, and environmental monitoring programs. We hope that this project will demonstrate that real, measurable public health impact can be achieved by the use of WGS for prospective surveillance.
Contact: Mr. John Besser, jtw8@cdc.gov
Next GMI meeting
Preliminary dates for the 7th meeting in the GMI initiative are 11-12 September 2014. The meeting will take place in York, in UK.
Contact: Mr. Alisdair Wotherspoon, Alisdair.Wotherspoon@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk or Mr. Robert Stones, Robert.stones@fera.gsi.gov.uk