But despite efforts like these, the most vulnerable countries of Asia have few if any reliable monitoring systems in place. These blind spots could hamper activities such as making sure enough vaccine is available where it's needed the most.

Given the sophistication of the tools available today, finding ways to comprehensively track a pandemic in North America would be fairly simple, says Michael Stoto, an analyst at the Rand Corp., a research group in Arlington, Va. However, the best way to use the data is another matter. Tracking an outbreak doesn't necessarily demonstrate how the virus is spreading, or over what geographic area. A fully enabled system would help assess and cross-reference each patient, track the length of time spent in the hospital or in quarantine, and give an end-to-end picture of the operations of the pandemic over wide regions.

"There are a whole host of things we could be doing to make our public systems more powerful and more efficient using health-care-based IT," says Mostashari.