Table 1.

Comparison of the more commonly used pandemic preparedness indices globally.

	GHS Index	IHR monitoring framework	EPIa	INFORM epidemic risk
Purpose	Assesses and benchmarks health security capabilities	Set of legal instruments designed to ensure and improve the capacity to prevent, detect, assess, notify, and respond to public health risks and acute events	Measures a country's capacity to detect and respond to infectious disease events	Risk assessment tool for humanitarian crisis, disasters and epidemics
Categories	Prevention of the emergence, early detection and reporting, rapid response and mitigation of spread, sufficient and robust health sector, commitments to national improvements, overall risk environment	Legislation, coordination, surveillance, response, preparedness, risk communication, human resources, laboratory, points of entry, zoonosis, food safety, chemical, radio-nuclear	Public health infrastructure, physical infrastructure, institutional capacity, economic resources	Hazard and exposure, vulnerability, lack of coping capacity
Top performers	United States, UK, Netherland, Australia, Canada, Thailand, Scandinavia and South Korea	Canada, United States, Singapore, Norway, Cuba, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan and China	European countries, United States, Canada and Australia	Scandinavia, Benelux countries and UK, Singapore and Canada

^aEPI and INFORM have not been accounted for in the empirical part of this study, but are portrayed in Table 1 for comparison.