May Larissa

The field of syndromic surveillance has received increased attention over the past decade as an expansion of traditional disease detection methods. There is, however, little or no consensus, regarding a standard definition encompassing the full scope of the term 'syndromic surveillance'. Several researchers have proposed at least 36 alternative names to differentiate various forms of syndromic surveillance but none has taken hold (including early warning, health indicator surveillance, enhanced surveillance, among others). Katz et al presented a redefining of syndromic surveillance as two overarching categories of 'syndrome based'“ versus 'syndrome non-specific'“ surveillance1. In addition, the Meaningful Use Stage 2 standard for syndromic surveillance includes both pre-diagnostic and diagnostic data elements, further broadening the scope of this surveillance method.

Objective

To provide a forum for stakeholders from various sectors of syndromic surveillance research and practice to discuss and establish a more accurate and comprehensive yet succinct definition of syndromic surveillance, based on lessons learned and innovations in public health surveillance practice.

Particularly in resource-poor settings, syndromic surveillance has been proposed as a feasible solution to the challenges in meeting the new disease surveillance requirements included in the World Health Organization's International Health Regulations (2005).

Objective

The aim of this study is to demonstrate how syndromic surveillance systems are working in low-resource settings while identifying the key best practices and considerations.

 Following the development of an introductory Continuing Education (CME) course in syndromic surveillance, the Education and Training Committee of the International Society for Disease Surveillance recognized the need to educate future non-medical public health workers and reviewed courses offered by the top five public health schools recognized by US News and World Report1.  All public health schools offered courses that included information on public health practice and infectious disease epidemiology and few offered courses on spatial and disaster epidemiology with attention given to syndromic surveillance, but none of the schools offered a comprehensive course that integrated topics of public health practice, infectious disease surveillance, data management and analytic techniques, disaster preparedness, and syndromic surveillance2-6.  The development of the graduate school course builds on our existing CME slide set goals that teaches students about syndromic surveillance and presents the course in a free and easy to use format for all schools of public health.  The ISDS hopes the semester long course will be taught by ISDS members in each state to spread awareness and knowledge on the topic of syndromic surveillance.

Objective

The paper describes the development of a graduate-level course to teach future non-medical public health workers about syndromic surveillance.

Syndromic surveillance aims to decrease the time to detection of an outbreak compared to traditional surveillance methods. Emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance systems vary in their methodology and complexity and are usually based on presenting chief complaints. Prior work in ED-based syndromic surveillance has shown conflicting results on agreement between chief complaint and discharge diagnosis, which may be syndrome-dependent. The use of ED discharge diagnosis may improve surveillance validity if it can be done in a timely fashion.

Objective 

The purpose of this study is to characterize the relationship of emergency department chief complaint and final primary ICD-9 diagnosis assigned at the time of emergency department disposition for patients with symptoms and/or ICD-9 codes associated with influenza like illness (ILI) using an electronic medical record.

58 medical licensure boards require between 12 and 50 hours of Continuing Medical Education (CME) for re-licensure of physicians. 28 states as well as Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Mariana Islands, require continuing nursing education (CNE) for nursing re-licensure, with requirements varying from 5 hours per year to 45 hours every 3 years. Continuing education requirements may include self-directed educational programs, academic education, or research and professional activities. To the best of our knowledge, although there are online public health preparedness programs and journal articles that provide continuing education credits, there is no currently available online course on syndromic surveillance available for CME or CNE.

Objective

The Education and Training Committee of the International Society for Disease Surveillance is developing an introductory online CME curriculum in syndromic surveillance for physicians and other health practitioners. This curriculum would also be available for public health practitioners new to syndromic surveillance. The goal of the curriculum is to provide an introductory knowledge of syndromic surveillance for interested practitioners and stimulate healthcare provider cooperation and involvement with syndromic surveillance.

The revised International Health Regulations (IHR) have expanded traditional infectious disease notification to include surveillance diseases of international importance, including emerging infectious diseases.  However, there are no clearly established guidelines for how countries should conduct this surveillance, which types of syndromes should be reported, nor any means for enforcement.  The commonly established concept of syndromic surveillance in developed regions encompasses the use of pre-diagnostic information in a near real time fashion for further investigation for public health action.  Syndromic surveillance is widely used in North America and Europe, and is typically thought of as a highly complex, technology driven automated tool for early detection of outbreaks.  Nonetheless, applications of syndromic surveillance using technology appropriate for the setting are being used worldwide to augment traditional surveillance, and may enhance compliance with the revised IHR.

Objective:

To review applications of syndromic surveillance in developing countries