Stages of the collective expertise
Collection of case reports
Clinical cases can be submitted by any occupational disease specialists, provided they gather sufficient qualitative information, not only on disease, but also on exposure, and work-relatedness assessment
OccWatch members who are not medical experts in occupational diseases (e.g. general practitioners, peoples involved in monitoring of occupational diseases) but who wish to report cases are encouraged to seek the opinion of the workers occupational physician beforehand and also possibly from organ specialists physician to rule out any non-occupational risk factors.
Reporting of similar cases and Discussions for building the expert appraisal
Occwatch members receive a notification when a new case report is posted for expert appraisal. They are all invited to take part to the discussion by posting contributions in the form of comments and possibly uploading attachments. The objectives of the discussion are to share information about any other similar case-reports known, and to exchange about hypotheses regarding the causality of occupational exposure, missing information, and possibly relevant actions to engage
Conclusion
Each case discussion is an opportunity to increase the level of knowledge and expertise of each member. The more members will give their opinion and share information within the structure proposed, the most the conclusions will be informative and legitimate.
The conclusion of a case includes details on the reasons for closure, the emergent or non-emergent nature of the case discussed with supporting arguments, actions planned, needs for further study or research, publication and communication, any alerts sent out to the authorities, etc.
Obviously, the case conclusion might be updated in the future, if new reports or new important information come to the knowledge of OccWatch members.
