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Faigen Zachary

Description

The advent of Meaningful Use (MU) has allowed for the expansion of data collected at the hospital level and received by public health for syndromic surveillance. The triage note, a free text expansion on the chief complaint, is one of the many variables that are becoming commonplace in syndromic surveillance data feeds. Triage notes are readily available in many ED information systems, including, but not limited to, Allscripts, Cerner, EPIC, HMS, MedHost, Meditech, and T-System. North Carolina’s syndromic surveillance system, NC DETECT, currently collects triage notes from 33 out of 122 hospitals in the State (27%), and this number is likely to increase.

Objective

This roundtable will provide a forum for the ISDS community to discuss the use of emergency department (ED) triage notes in syndromic surveillance. It will be an opportunity to discuss both the benefits of having this variable included in syndromic surveillance data feeds, as well as the drawbacks and challenges associated with working with such a detailed data field.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Description

Recreational drug use is a major problem in the United States and around the world. Specifically, drug abuse results in heavy use of emergency department (ED) services, and is a high financial burden to society and to the hospitals due to chronic ill health and multiple injection drug use complications. Intravenous drug users are at high risk of developing sepsis and endocarditis due to the use of a dirty or infected needle that is either shared with someone else or re-used. It can also occur when a drug user repeatedly injects into an inflamed and infected site or due to the poor overall health of an injection drug user. The average cost of hospitalization for aortic valve replacement in USA is about $165,000, and in order for the valve replacement to be successful, patients must abstain from using drugs.

Objective

To describe how the state syndromic surveillance system (NC DETECT) was used to initiate near real time surveillance for endocarditis, sepsis and skin infection among drug users.

Submitted by Magou on
Description

MERS-CoV was discovered in 2012 in the Middle East and human cases around the world have been carefully reported by the WHO. MERS-CoV virus is a novel betacoronavirus closely related to a virus (NeoCov) hosted by a bat, Neoromicia capensis. MERS-CoV infects humans and camels. In 2015, MERS-CoV spread from the Middle East to South Korea which sustained an outbreak. Thus, it is clear that the virus can spread among humans in areas in which camels are not husbanded.

Objective

Here we use novel methods of phylogenetic transmission graph analysis to reconstruct the geographic spread of MERS-CoV. We compare these results to those derived from text mining and visualization of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Disease Outbreak News.

 

Submitted by Magou on
Description

CPC provides the 24/7/365 poison hotline for the entire state of North Carolina and currently handles approximately 80,000 calls per year. CPC consultation services that assist callers with poison exposure, diagnosis, optimal patient management, therapy, and patient disposition guidance remain indispensable to the public and health care providers. Poison control center data have been used for years in syndromic surveillance practice as a reliable data source for early event detection. This information has been useful for a variety of public health issues, including environmental exposures, foodborne diseases, overdoses, medication errors, drug identification, drug abuse trends and other information needs. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services started formal integration of CPC information into surveillance activities in 2004. CPC call data are uploaded in real time (hourly), 24/7/365, to the NC DETECT state database.

Objective

To describe Carolinas Poison Control Center (CPC) calls data collected in the NC DETECT syndromic surveillance system.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on