The overall aim of this workshop is to learn the basic concepts and methods of public health genomics and acquire basic skills for use of open- access tools for integrated analysis and visualisation of WGS and epidemiological data as well as participate in multidisciplinary interpretation of results to inform disease control.

The training course covers 8 key areas: 

• Basics of viral/bacterial genomics, genome structure and evolution
• Next Generation Sequencing technology overview 
• Principles of sequence comparisons, SNP and MLST analysis 
• Phylogeny: different types of trees, how to read a tree, terminology for branches and leaves 
• Epidemiological and phenotypic inference from WGS data 
• Public health benefits of real-time WGS-enhanced surveillance for outbreak detection and response 
• How to establish a WGS-enhanced national surveillance system 
• Outbreak Case studies (FWD, AMR) using online WGS/epidemiological data integrated analysis and visualisation tools

Target audience Public health professionals with microbiology and/or epidemiology backgrounds who are conducting laboratory-based surveillance and using molecular typing data for surveillance of communicable diseases and who are planning to implement integration and use of WGS data for national surveillance in 2019 or later in their Member State.