A remote management system for control and surveillance of echinococcosis: design and implementation based on internet of things.

Background: As a neglected cross-species parasitic disease transmitted between canines and livestock, echinococcosis remains a global public health concern with a heavy disease burden. In China, especially in the epidemic pastoral communities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the harsh climate, low socio-economic status, poor overall hygiene, and remote and insufficient access to all owned dogs exacerbate the difficulty in implementing the ambitious control programme for echinococcosis. We aimed to design and implement a remote management system (RMS) based on internet of things (IoT) for control and surveillance of echinococcosis by combining deworming devices to realise long-distance smart deworming control, smooth statistical analysis and result display. New methods and tools are urgently needed to increase the deworming coverage and frequency, promote real-time scientific surveillance, and prevent transmission of echinococcosis in remoted transmission areas.

Methods: From 2016 to 2019, we had cooperated and developed the smart collar and smart feeder with the Central Research Institute of Shanghai Electric Group Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China) and Shenzhen Jizhi Future Technology Co., Ltd. (Shenzhen, China). From September 2019 to March 2020, We had proposed the RMS based on IoT as a novel tool to control smart deworming devices to deliver efficient praziquantel (PZQ) baits to dogs regularly and automatically and also as a smart digital management platform to monitor, analyse, and display the epidemic trends of echinococcosis dynamically, in real time in Hezuo City, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province, China. Starting from January 2018, The RMS has been maintained and upgraded by Shanghai Yier Information Technology Co., Ltd (Shanghai, China). The database was based on MySQL tools and the Chi-square test was used to probe the difference and changes of variables in different groups.

Results: The smart collars are fully capable of anti-collision, waterproof, and cold-proof performance, and the battery's energy is sufficient, the anti-collision rate, water-proof rate, cold-proof rate and voltage normal rate is 99.6% (521/523), 100.0% (523/523), 100.0% (523/523) and 100.0% (523/523), respectively. The RMS can accurately analyse the monitoring data and parameters including positive rates of canine faeces, and the prevalence of echinococcosis in the general population livestock, and children. The data of dogs deworming and surveillance for echinococcosis is able to be controlled using RMS and has expanded gradually in townships to the whole Hezuo region. The automatic delivering PZQ rate, collar positioning rate, deliver PZQ reminding rate, and fault report rate is 91.1% (1914/2102), 92.1% (13 580/14 745), 92.1% (1936/2102) and 84.7% (1287/1519), respectively. After using the RMS from 2019, the missing rate of monitoring data decreased from 32.1% (9/28) to 0 (0/16). A total of 48 administrators (3, 3, 8, 11, 23 at the provincial, municipal, county, township, village levels, respectively) participated in the questionnaire survey, with 93.8% of its overall satisfaction rate.

Conclusions: The existing difficulties and challenges in the way of prevention and control for echinococcosis can partially be resolved using the innovative, IoT-based technologies and tools. The proposed RMS advance the upgrade of existing manual prevention and control models for echinococcosis, especially in the current ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as social distance and community blockade continue.