Vaccines that spread through populations like viruses, 3D printed drugs and greater use of drones and robotics are the latest weapons that could be unleashed in the fight against an emerging infectious disease outbreak.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Center for Global Security have unveiled the hi-tech gizmos they believe could be used to halt a worldwide pandemic on the scale of the 1918 influenza outbreak, thought to have killed between 50 and 100 million people.
A new report looks at technologies that are already available but have not been applied to an emergency situation before or are so new that they are still in development.
The researchers identified 15 promising technologies in five broad categories:
disease detection and surveillance
manufacture of pharmaceuticals
administration of vaccines and drugs
Dr Crystal Watson, lead author of the report and assistant professor in the department of environmental health and engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said: “There’s been a lot of discussion and thought put into the risks of these types of emergencies but we wanted to look at the positive side - what can be done to address these risks.”
She said the researchers considered technologies that could be used at every step of a pandemic: from the earliest detection of an emerging infectious disease, to preventing its spread, through to the care of patients.
Dr Watson said that some of the most exciting technologies looked at novel ways of administering vaccines such as self-spreading or propagating vaccines. She described these as potentially "game changing".
Self-spreading vaccines are given to a few key individuals in a population and are genetically engineered so that the active vaccine strain moves through a group of people like a pathogenic disease.
The report admits there are “substantial technical challenges” in genetically engineering a vaccine but technology such as the Crispr gene editing tool should make the job easier.
The vaccines have so far only been used in animals - notably to prevent myxomatosis in wild rabbits - but as most emerging diseases are animal in origin developing a technology to prevent Ebola in bats, for example, are currently being studied by researchers.
However, once a disease is established in humans such technology would not break transmission so developing something that could work in the human population too is important, says the report.
Another novel way of administering vaccine is a patch, similar to those used to administer insulin or contraceptives. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US is looking at patches to be used in global health settings but they could also be modified for emergency use.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, an organisation developing vaccines against emerging infectious disease, is also looking at novel ways of administering vaccines.
People could administer the patches themselves, without the need for a health professional. The response to the current Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo is being hampered because vaccinators have not been able to reach everyone at risk because of the poor security situation around Beni, the epicentre of the outbreak.
The report calls for the use of drones in such situations to deliver clinical material to areas that are difficult to access.
Other developments include the use of 3D printing - such printers can already synthesise chemicals and pharmaceuticals and the advantage of this technology is that it can be used anywhere a printer can go, avoiding the need for large-scale manufacturing facilities, says the report.
Instructions or algorithms for a drug or vaccine could be sent to printers around the world enabling rapid manufacture.
Dr Watson said that researchers looked for innovations that could be used in developing countries - where infectious disease outbreaks hit first and hit hardest.
"We also tried to focus on things that, at least in the future, had the promise of being low cost so they would be readily scaleable and available in developing countries," she said.