The Environmental Health Care team of the Department of Care is responsible for the preparation, implementation, and substantiation of the preventive health policy regarding environmental health care in Flanders. Environmental health care is the part of preventive health policy that, through a multidisciplinary approach involving at least the scientific disciplines of medicine, toxicology, epidemiology, health care, environmental technology, and environmental science, focuses on the prevention, early detection, and intervention of environmental health damage. Within the Flemish Medical Environmental Network (VMMN), the team collaborates with various governments, knowledge institutions, and partner organizations for this purpose. The core activities of the team include climate and health, risk analysis, promoting a healthy public space, environmental health care focus areas, recreation and drinking water quality, indoor environment, nature health, and soil health. Analyses are conducted to estimate the environmental-related health impact, and advice is formulated on environmental health care aspects. However, the knowledge landscape within medical environmental science is growing particularly rapidly. New scientific insights, technological developments, changing legislation, and international societal developments provide a continuous stream of information. The systematic monitoring, evaluation, and application of this knowledge is currently done largely manually and requires considerable personnel efforts. This increases the risk of knowledge gaps, while the Department of Care is expected to provide advice, policy decisions, and health impact analyses based on the most current and reliable insights. To address this challenge, the Department of Care wishes to develop an AI-mediated knowledge surveillance system. This system must automatically detect, process, structure, and make accessible relevant information from internal and external sources to policy officers and experts. The solution supports the monitoring of scientific literature, policy documents, reports, legislation, and other knowledge sources and translates these into usable document briefs and syntheses. The system focuses on the four central themes within Environmental Health Care: Substances of Very High Concern, Climate and Health, Healthy Public Space, and One Health. Knowledge is organized according to the source-exposure-burden-effect chain (BBBE), enabling users to more quickly find and apply relevant insights in files, risk analyses, policy preparation, and advising. These initiatives have their legal basis in the Prevention Decree, the decree on general provisions of Environmental Policy concerning environmental hygienic aspects, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Decree; and are deployed according to the prioritization of the Environmental Health Care health objective and the climate health plan. The intended solution supports human expertise but does not replace it. Interpretation, validation, and policy-related interpretation remain the responsibility of substantive experts. Therefore, a human-in-the-loop approach is chosen wherein AI-generated output is supplemented with quality controls and human validation. Furthermore, the solution must comply with applicable requirements regarding privacy, information security, AI governance, and legislation, including GDPR and the EU AI Act. It must integrate with the Microsoft and Windows environment of the Department of Care and be coordinated with the Policy Information and Data (BID) and Communication and IT (CIT) departments to create a secure, scalable, and sustainably manageable solution that can also be applied in other teams within the Department of Care.
LOT-0001
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DZ/2026/PGB/017/KnowledgeSurveillance_EHC - 1.
The Environmental Health Care team of the Department of Care is responsible for the preparation, implementation, and substantiation of the preventive health policy regarding environmental health care in Flanders. Environmental health care is the part of preventive health policy that, through a multidisciplinary approach involving at least the scientific disciplines of medicine, toxicology, epidemiology, health care, environmental technology, and environmental science, focuses on the prevention, early detection, and intervention of environmental health damage. Within the Flemish Medical Environmental Network (VMMN), the team collaborates with various governments, knowledge institutions, and partner organizations for this purpose. The core activities of the team include climate and health, risk analysis, promoting a healthy public space, environmental health care focus areas, recreation and drinking water quality, indoor environment, nature health, and soil health. Analyses are conducted to estimate the environmental-related health impact, and advice is formulated on environmental health care aspects.
The knowledge landscape within medical environmental science is, however, growing particularly rapidly. New scientific insights, technological developments, changing legislation, and international societal developments provide a continual stream of information. The systematic monitoring, evaluation, and application of this knowledge is currently done largely manually and requires considerable personnel efforts. This increases the risk of knowledge gaps, while the Department of Care is expected to provide advice, policy decisions, and health impact analyses based on the most current and reliable insights.
To address this challenge, the Department of Care wishes to develop an AI-mediated knowledge surveillance system. This system must automatically detect, process, structure, and make accessible relevant information from internal and external sources to policy officers and experts. The solution supports the monitoring of scientific literature, policy documents, reports, legislation, and other knowledge sources and translates these into usable document briefs and syntheses.
The system focuses on the four central themes within Environmental Health Care: Substances of Very High Concern, Climate and Health, Healthy Public Space, and One Health. Knowledge is organized according to the source-exposure-burden-effect chain (BBBE), enabling users to more quickly find and apply relevant insights in files, risk analyses, policy preparation, and advising. These initiatives have their legal basis in the Prevention Decree, the decree on general provisions of Environmental Policy concerning environmental hygienic aspects, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Decree; and are deployed according to the prioritization of the Environmental Health Care health objective and the climate health plan.
The intended solution supports human expertise but does not replace it. Interpretation, validation, and policy-related interpretation remain the responsibility of substantive experts. Therefore, a human-in-the-loop approach is chosen wherein AI-generated output is supplemented with quality controls and human validation.
The solution must furthermore comply with applicable requirements regarding privacy, information security, AI governance, and legislation, including GDPR and the EU AI Act. It must integrate with the Microsoft and Windows environment of the Department of Care and be coordinated with the Policy Information and Data (BID) and Communication and IT (CIT) departments to create a secure, scalable, and sustainably manageable solution that can also be applied in other teams within the Department of Care.