The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) Health Service Region 8 (HSR 8) encompasses 28 counties in South Central Texas. Of these, 5 counties are covered by a local health department syndromic surveillance system while the remaining counties fall under HSR 8 syndromic surveillance coverage. Of the 23 counties covered by HSR 8, 15 have hospitals with emergency departments. HSR 8 began receiving emergency department data from 3 hospitals for RedBat® syndromic surveillance monitoring in May of 2006. Four syndromes are monitored daily; Influenza-like Illness, Gastrointestinal Illness (GI), Rash-Illness, and Neurologic-Toxicologic Illness. Aberrations are detected by the Gustav algorithm using RedBat’s ‘Automatic Threshold Alert’ feature. The Gustav algorithm [patent pending], developed by ICPA, Inc., is an advanced variation of the cumulative sum method commonly used for aberration detection. The Gustav algorithm does not require an extended baseline level of illness and is very sensitive to small outbreaks; the algorithm also adjusts for weekly periodicity of medical visits.
Objective
This abstract describes the use of syndromic surveillance at a regional health department to detect an outbreak of norovirus in a nursing home facility.