Founded in 1994, ProMED has pioneered the concept of electronic, Internet-based emerging disease and outbreak detection reporting.

[3] With an average of 13 posts per day, ProMED provides users with up-to-date information concerning infectious disease outbreaks on a global scale.

[citation needed] ProMED's guiding principles include: One of the essential global health priorities is the timely recognition and reporting of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.

Additionally, early detection can alleviate grave economic hardship brought upon by pandemics and emerging diseases.

The epidemiological data in ProMED posts has been used to estimate mortality rates and demographic parameters for specific diseases.

The Epicore programme, launched in March 2016 by various organizations including the patrons of ProMED-mail, makes use of volunteers throughout the world to find and report outbreaks using non-traditional methods.

ProMED encourages subscribers to contribute data, respond to requests for information, and collaborate in outbreak investigations and prevention efforts.

Reports detail infectious disease outbreaks with geotags and links to related media articles and other ProMED posts.

To provide access to a global audience, versions of ProMED are available in several languages and cover different regions, including ProMED-ESP (Spanish), ProMED-PORT (Portuguese), ProMED-RUS (Russian), ProMED-FRA (French), ProMED-MENA (Middle East and North Africa), ProMED-SoAs (South Asia and Arabic Summaries), as well as English-language versions ProMED-MBDS (Mekong Basin region of Southeast Asia) and ProMED-EAFR (Africa).

This collaboration combined ProMED-mail's global network of human, animal, and ecosystem health specialists with HealthMap's digital detection efforts.