About

WHO Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance

WHONET

WHONET is co-founded by Drs. O'Brien and Stelling. Drs. O’Brien and Stelling co-direct the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance, which is charged with developing infrastructure and tools to advance the initiative of global surveillance of antibiotic resistance. WHO Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance, established in 1985, consists of Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

The last few years have seen development and worldwide deployment of a new version of our database software. A wider application of our data capture and conversion utility (BacLink) to extract data from hospital laboratory reporting systems; and new web-based tools for public health reporting to the CDC National Healthcare Safety Network and to state health departments. WHONET and SaTScan are now being applied to detection of national outbreaks in a large Latin American country and of hospital outbreaks in a 45 hospital network in the U.S..

The Collaborating Centre has worked and its co-directors traveled extensively this year to provide data, reports and consultations to support the renewed efforts of WHO Geneva and its Regional Offices, including especially Western Pacific, to put the problem of antimicrobial resistance at the center of their attention and work and gain it a larger share of resources.

CDC.GOV - Emerging Infectious Diseases - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/1/2/95-0209_article

Our team

Dr. Tom O'Brien

Co-Founder

Dr. Thomas O'Brien is an infectious disease specialist in Boston, Massachusetts. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and has been in practice for 61 years.

In 1995, Dr. O'Brien became a Co-Founder of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance. And along with Dr. Stelling have been charged with developing, disseminating and supporting the free WHONET software, currently used to support surveillance activities in over 120 countries in over 2,300 hospital, public health, food, and veterinary laboratories.

Dr. John Stelling, MD MPH

Co-Founder

Dr. John Stelling is Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance based at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. He received his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University and Master’s in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.

In 1991, Dr. Stelling graduated from Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology and in 1995 completed an internship in family practice at San Francisco General Hospital.

The focus of his work has been to support public health infrastructure for laboratory services, including three years as a Medical Officer with the World Health Organization Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring Unit, and advancing data management tools for laboratory-based surveillance of infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance.

Since 1989, He has developed, disseminated and supported the free WHONET software, currently used to support surveillance activities in over 120 countries in over 2,300 hospital, public health, food, and veterinary laboratories.

jstelling@whonet.org

Adam Clark

Software Engineer

Adam Clark is the principal WHONET software engineer. He has been working with the project since 2011.

Since then, he has greatly refactored and extended the desktop applications WHONET and BacLink, improved the web version of WHONET, created the WHONET Automation Tool, and the AMR Interpretation Engine among other accomplishments.

Adam has also developed a number of supporting softwares that have helped streamline the development-to-distribution pipeline and will continue to have a substantive impact for years to come.

aclark@whonet.org