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Leung Gabriel

The detailed analysis of the epidemiological literature on the 2003 SARS epidemic published in peer reviewed journals has shown that a majority (78%) of the epidemiological articles were submitted after the epidemic had ended, although the

corresponding studies had relevance to public health authorities during the epidemic. The conclusion was that to minimize the lag between research and the exigency of public health practice in the future, researchers should consider adopting common, predefined protocols and ready-to-use instruments to improve timeliness, and thus, relevance, in addition to standardizing comparability across studies.

 

Objective

This paper describes how the ideas and tools of e-commerce can be translated to the investigation of outbreaks: epidemiologists will ‘shop’ the best available items for their

questionnaire, enhance the chances of producing interoperable questionnaires, and speed up the whole process.

Referenced File
Submitted by hparton on

Surveillance systems utilizing early indicator of disease activity would be useful for monitoring community disease pattern and facilitating timely decision making on public health interventions in an evidence-based manner. School absenteeism has been previously considered as a possible syndromic approach for monitoring influenza activity. We explored the feasibility and practicability of establishing an electronic school absenteeism surveillance system in Hong Kong for monitoring influenza-like illness (ILI) and other diseases using automatically captured data employing smart card technology.

Objective

We examined the utility of an electronic school absenteeism system for monitoring multiple types of diseases.

Submitted by knowledge_repo… on

Surveillance of individual data streams is a well-accepted approach to monitor community incidence of infectious diseases such as influenza, and to enable timely detection of outbreaks so that control measures can be applied. However the performance of alerts may be improved by simultaneously monitor a variety of data sources, or multiple streams (eg from different geographic locations) of the same type, rather than monitoring only aggregate data. Rates of influenza-like illness in subtropical settings typically show greater variability than in temperate regions.

 

Objective

This paper describes the use of time series models for simultaneous monitoring of multiple streams of influenza surveillance data.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

Infectious disease surveillance is important for disease control as well as to inform prevention and treatment [1]. While influenza surveillance data coverage and quality has improved significantly in recent years due to resource investments and advances in information technology, the need remains for improvements in data dissemination to the wider community.

Objective

This paper describes a review of modes and styles of the online dissemination of national influenza surveillance data.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

An electronic smart-card based school absenteeism surveillance system was introduced to Hong Kong since 2008. The pilot surveillance system initially began with 18 schools in 2008, and expanded to 107 schools in the current academic year of 2013-14. Data on all-cause absenteeism were collected from all participating schools and absenteeism due to sickness such as influenza-like illness, gastroenteritis and hand-foot-and-mouth disease were collected from 39 (36.4%) schools. Data collected were aggregated for the whole territory on a weekly basis for analysis. Temporal trend of influenza activity was disseminated with simple public health advice to each participating schools and the general public through a web-based dashboard [1]. These steps of data aggregation, analysis, and feedback report generation were automated by scripts in the software R which enhanced the timeliness and minimized workload required for maintaining the system.

Objective

This study evaluated the performance of an electronic smart-card based school absenteeism system in Hong Kong, 2008-2014.

Submitted by Magou on

The influenza A(H7N9) virus emerged in early 2013 in China, with more than 130 laboratory-confirmed cases identified within a short period of about three months. Evidence-based public health response is essential for effective control of the disease, which relies on epidemiological and clinical data with good quality and timeliness. Publicly available information from sources such as official health website, online news, blogs or social media has the potential of rapid sharing of data to a wide community of experts for more comprehensive analyses. In our study we described the strength and limitation of these data for various types of epidemiological inferences.

Objective

This study described the strength and limitation of using line lists that built on publicly available data in various types of epidemiological inferences during the H7N9 epidemic in China, 2013.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on

H7N9 virus emerged in Eastern China in March 2013, which led to >550 human cases and >200 deaths in 2 years. Live poultry markets (LPMs) are considered as a major source of human H7N9 infections. In late 2013, the virus had spread to the southern provinces including Guangdong. Its provincial capital Guangzhou, detected its first local H7N9 human case in mid-January 2014 and reaching 10 cases in a month. As a response, Guangzhou government announced a two-week city-wide market closure, banning trading and storing of live poultry. Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention took this opportunity to establish enhanced surveillance on top of the existing routine LPM surveillance, to assess the impact of such on H7N9 viral isolation and survival.

Objective

This study assessed the effect of disinfection and closing live poultry markets in China on avian influenza A(H7N9) virus detection and viability in a natural setting. We characterized virus detection at different sampling sites to assess exposure risk to the general public and live poultry traders.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
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