Fever as a Measure for Early Detection of Influenza Outbreaks in the Emergency Department

Emergency Department surveillance methods currently rely on identification of acute illness by tracking chief complaint or ICD9 discharge codes. Newer generation electronic medical records are now capturing additional  information such as vital signs. These data have the potential for identifying disease syndromes earlier than the traditional methods.

Objective

This paper describes the temporal relationship between numbers of cases of fever, recorded as discrete vital sign data in an electronic medical record, and ICD9 Influenza Like Illnesses in the Emergency Department at the University of Wisconsin Hospital.