Skip to main content

Valleron Alain-Jacques

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

The interest of medication sales data in Syndromic Surveillance is well recognized. In France, where a real-time computerized surveillance system of frequent communicable diseases based on Sentinel general practitioners (SGPs) provides since 1984 a gold standard to evaluate other indicators, it has been shown that medication sales provided early alerts for influenza. Gastroenteritis surveillance relies in France on the surveillance of acute diarrhea by the SGPs in the general population, since 1991. The main objective of this study is to validate, at a national level, new indicators based on medication sales data to facilitate the detection of gastroenteritis epidemics.

 

Objective

This study examines how medication sales data can detect gastroenteritis epidemics in France.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on
Subscribe to Valleron Alain-Jacques