SORMAS: A multi-country One Health approach to surveillance
Categories: Action Line 1: Surveillance and monitoring, Integrated risks, monitoring, early warning, and GHG emissions tracking, Health systems wide resilience
Organizations: The Rockefeller Foundation, Digital Square (Path)
Country: Multi-country (initially Nigeria; later Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nepal, Tunisia, Djibouti, Afghanistan, Luxembourg, Bolivia)
The intervention
SORMAS (Surveillance Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System) was developed under the Digital Square Global Goods programme, an initiative that supports open, scalable digital health tools tailored to countries’ needs. First created during Nigeria’s 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak to address surveillance and outbreak management gaps, SORMAS is an open-source platform enabling real-time monitoring, contact tracing, and case management. With the onset of COVID-19, SORMAS was rapidly adapted with new modules and features, expanding its global use across countries including Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Nepal, and Luxembourg. Recently, a new environmental surveillance module was added to integrate One Health approaches for climate-related infectious disease control.
Success factors
SORMAS’s success lies in its adaptability, user accessibility, and emphasis on security and collaboration. The system operates seamlessly across devices - online and offline - allowing users to manage cases, contacts, and lab results efficiently. Its intuitive dashboards and multi-level permissions ensure data integrity and protection in line with GDPR standards. Real-time, multidirectional data sharing facilitates coordination between hospitals, laboratories, and surveillance officers, streamlining workflows and accelerating response times. As an open-source platform, SORMAS promotes transparency, interoperability, and country ownership - empowering national authorities to customize, manage, and host the system independently while avoiding vendor lock-in.
Recommendations
Replication of SORMAS in new contexts should uphold three core principles: ownership, security, and transparency. Countries must retain full control over data and customization to align with their surveillance structures. Strong data protection measures - such as anonymization and regulated user access - are essential for maintaining trust. Leveraging the open-source model ensures shared innovation, continuous improvement, and long-term sustainability. Integrating environmental and health surveillance under a One Health framework can further enhance early warning and outbreak response capacity, particularly for climate-sensitive diseases. Investing in capacity building and inter-agency coordination maximizes the system’s impact and scalability.
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