Digital and AI-Driven Surveillance of Emerging and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

The increasingly rapid pace at which infectious diseases emerge and re-emerge requires innovative surveillance paradigms capable of integrating heterogeneous, high-speed data streams into useful public health information. Traditional epidemiological monitoring systems, while essential, often lack the timeliness and granularity needed to detect the early signs of an outbreak in an increasingly interconnected world. Digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) are redefining the surveillance landscape, enabling real-time data capture, advanced analytics, and predictive modeling across multiple scales, from molecular evolution to population-level transmission dynamics.

This Special Issue focuses on the development, validation, and implementation of digital and AI-based tools for infectious disease surveillance. Contributions addressing machine learning algorithms, deep learning architectures, big data analytics, genomic surveillance, digital epidemiology, syndromic surveillance, and decision-support systems are welcome. Studies integrating molecular data with epidemiological and environmental information, as well as applications leveraging mobile technologies, electronic health records, wearable devices, and social media data, are particularly encouraged.

By promoting interdisciplinary collaboration between epidemiologists, statisticians, data scientists, and public health professionals, this Special Issue aims to promote scalable, transparent, and ethically responsible surveillance frameworks that can improve preparedness, early detection, and response to infectious threats worldwide.

Prof. Dr. Massimo Ciccozzi
Dr. Francesco Branda
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Infectious Disease Reports is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• digital epidemiology
• artificial intelligence
• predictive modeling
• genomic surveillance
• public health informatics
• decision-support systems
• real-time surveillance