Ministry of Rural Development and Food, Directorate General of Rural Development, Directorate of Research, Innovation and Education, Hapsa & Karatasou 1, 54626 Thessaloniki, Greece.
Toxins (Basel). 2021 Sep 30;13(10):692. doi: 10.3390/toxins13100692.
Currently, digital technologies influence information dissemination in all business sectors, with great emphasis put on exploitation strategies. Public administrations often use information systems and establish open data repositories, primarily supporting their operation but also serving as data providers, facilitating decision-making. As such, risk analysis in the public health sector, including food safety authorities, often relies on digital technologies and open data sources. Global food safety challenges include marine biotoxins (MBs), being contaminants whose mitigation largely depends on risk analysis. Ciguatera Fish Poisoning (CFP), in particular, is a MB-related seafood intoxication attributed to the consumption of fish species that are prone to accumulate ciguatoxins. Historically, CFP occurred endemically in tropical/subtropical areas, but has gradually emerged in temperate regions, including European waters, necessitating official policy adoption to manage the potential risks. Researchers and policy-makers highlight scientific data inadequacy, under-reporting of outbreaks and information source fragmentation as major obstacles in developing CFP mitigation strategies. Although digital technologies and open data sources provide exploitable scientific information for MB risk analysis, their utilization in counteracting CFP-related hazards has not been addressed to date. This work thus attempts to answer the question, "What is the current extent of digital technologies' and open data sources' utilization within risk analysis tasks in the MBs field, particularly on CFP?", by conducting a systematic literature review of the available scientific and grey literature. Results indicate that the use of digital technologies and open data sources in CFP is not negligible. However, certain gaps are identified regarding discrepancies in terminology, source fragmentation and a redundancy and downplay of social media utilization, in turn constituting a future research agenda for this under-researched topic.
目前，数字技术影响着所有商业领域的信息传播，重点是开发策略。公共管理部门经常使用信息系统并建立开放的数据存储库，主要支持其运营，但也作为数据提供者，为决策提供便利。因此，公共卫生部门（包括食品安全当局）的风险分析通常依赖于数字技术和开放数据源。全球食品安全挑战包括海洋生物毒素（MBs），它们的缓解在很大程度上取决于风险分析。赤潮鱼中毒（CFP）尤其与 MB 相关的海鲜中毒，归因于食用易积累雪卡毒素的鱼类。历史上，CFP 在热带/亚热带地区流行，但已逐渐出现在温带地区，包括欧洲水域，需要采取官方政策来管理潜在风险。研究人员和政策制定者强调，科学数据不足、疫情报告不足和信息源碎片化是制定 CFP 缓解策略的主要障碍。尽管数字技术和开放数据源为 MB 风险分析提供了可利用的科学信息，但迄今为止，它们在对抗 CFP 相关危害方面的利用尚未得到解决。因此，本研究试图通过对现有科学和灰色文献进行系统文献综述，回答“在 MB 领域，特别是在 CFP 风险分析任务中，数字技术和开放数据源的利用程度如何？”这一问题。结果表明，数字技术和开放数据源在 CFP 中的使用不可忽视。然而，在术语差异、来源碎片化以及对社交媒体利用的冗余和淡化方面存在一些差距，这构成了对这个研究不足的主题的未来研究议程。
