Reporting notifiable conditions to public health authorities by health-care providers and laboratories is fundamental to the prevention, control, and monitoring of population-based disease. To successfully develop community centered health, public health strives to understand and to manage the diseases in its community. Public health surveillance systems provide the mechanisms for public health professionals to ascertain the true disease burden of the population in their community. The information
necessary to determine the disease burden is primarily found in the data generated during clinical care processes.
Objective
This poster will present a predictive model to describe the actual number of confirmed cases for an outbreak (H1N1) based on the current number of confirmed cases reported to public health. The model describes the methods used to calculate the number of cases expected in a community based on the lag time in the diagnosis and reporting of these cases to public health departments.