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Increasing the Return-on-Investment from Syndromic Surveillance: Putting the Systems to Work for Routine Local Health Department Activities

Description

Since October 2004, the Indiana State Health Department and the Marion County Health Department have been developing and using a syndromic surveillance system based on emergency department admission data. The system currently receives standards-based HL7 emergency department visit data, including free-text chief complaints from 72 hospitals throughout the state. Fourteen of these hospitals are in Marion County, which serves the Indianapolis metropolitan region (population 865,000).

 

Objective

This paper describes how a syndromic surveillance system based on emergency department data may be leveraged for other public health uses.

Submitted by elamb on