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Evaluation of Syndromic Surveillance

Seasonal influenza epidemics are responsible for over 200,000 hospitalizations in the United States per year, and 39,000 of them are in children. In the United States, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices guides immunization practices, including influenza vaccination, with recommendations revised on an annual basis. For the 2006–2007 flu season, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations for influenza vaccination began including healthy children aged 24–59 months (two to four years), a shift that added 10.6 million children to the target group.

Canada has a parallel federal organization, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, which is responsible for guiding the use of vaccines. Recommendations made by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices around seasonal influenza vaccination was concordant until the 2006–2007 season. Starting in the 2010–2011 season, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization has further expanded its recommendations to additional pediatric age groups by including two- to four-year-olds for targeted seasonal influenza vaccination.

We took advantage of this divergence in policy between two neighboring countries with similar annual seasonal influenza epidemics to try to understand the effects of the

policy change in the United States to expand influenza vaccination coverage to other pediatric populations.

 

Objective

The objective of this study is to estimate the effect of expanding recommendations for routine seasonal influenza vaccination to include 24–59-month-old children.

Referenced File
Submitted by hparton on

The 2010 NATO DSS experiment was the second deployment of the French ‘Alerte et Surveillance en Temps Re´el’ (ASTER) system within a multinational armed task force in real operational conditions. This experiment was scheduled within the ASTER evaluation program, as constructed by French and NATO Armed Forces after several previous works.

Objective

The new NATO Disease Surveillance System (DSS) was deployed for the second time in Kosovo within the multinational armed forces in 2010 for a 3 days experiment. The objective of the survey was to continue the development of real-time disease surveillance capability for NATO forces, in parallel with the implementation of the NATO Deployment Health Surveillance Centre in Munich in 2010.

Referenced File
Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on

http://Google.org developed a regression model that used the volume of influenza-related search queries best correlated with the proportion of outpatient visits related to influenza-like illness (ILI) model to estimate the level of ILI activity. For calibration, the model used ILINet data from October 2003 to 2009, which report weekly ILI activity as the percentage of patient visits to health care providers for ILI from the total number patient visits for the week. Estimates of ILI in 121 cities were added in January 2010.

 

Objective

This paper compares estimates of ILI activity with estimates from the Centers for Disease Control’s ILINet from October 2008 through March 2010.

Referenced File
Submitted by hparton on

The New York City (NYC) Department of Health and Mental Hygiene monitors visits daily from 49 of 54 NYC emergency departments (EDs), capturing 95% of all ED visits. ED visits for influenza-like illness (ILI) have reflected influenza activity in NYC, better than the more broadly defined fever/flu and respiratory syndromes, but the correlation with H1N1 is unknown. 

Laboratory-confirmed influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) were made reportable in NYC in February 2008. DOHMH receives electronic reports of positive tests. 

As part of 2009–10 influenza surveillance, five hospitals were selected for ‘sentinel’ surveillance of hospitalized influenza cases, to test all patients with a respiratory condition for influenza. Sentinel hospitals ensured that patient medical record numbers were in the daily ED syndromic file and in the electronic laboratory reports.

 

Objective

To determine the correlation of the ILI syndrome with laboratory-confirmed H1N1 and RSV during the October 2009 to March 2010 H1N1 season in NYC.

Referenced File
Submitted by hparton on

Schools inherently foster the transmission of infections from person to person because they are a group setting in which people are in close contact and share supplies and equipment. Surveillance is important in schools and actions that can help control the spread of infections are the key to effective disease control in the community [1]. School health physicians should play an important role in surveillance. Their training on data collection, analysis, reporting and importance of feedback is recommended in order to improve the disease surveillance system and therefore the prevention and control of diseases.

Objective

We assessed the effect of a training program on the knowledge of school physicians regarding surveillance. The purpose of evaluation is to improve the information provided and thereby help improve service provision and delivery.

Submitted by elamb on

During March-May 2013, 14 overdose deaths occurred in RI that were caused by acetyl fentanyl, a novel synthetic opioid about five times more potent than heroin1. Ten of these deaths were clustered in March, causing a significant increase over baseline of monthly illicit drug overdose deaths in RI1. Overdose deaths are well described in RI by forensic toxicology testing results. However, the overall number of ED visits associated with this event was unknown. We used RODS data retrospectively to characterize overdose related ED visits in RI and to analyze trends.

Objective

Determine if the Rhode Island (RI) Real-time Outbreak and Disease Surveillance (RODS) system (a syndromic surveillance system) identified an increase in overdoses during a known cluster of illicit drug overdose deaths in RI and characterize emergency department (ED) overdose visits during the 15 month period prior to and including the known cluster.

Submitted by elamb on

The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is funding multiple development efforts directed at enhanced platforms to support bio-surveillance analysts under their Bio-surveillance Ecosystem (BSVE) program. These efforts include well-integrated user interface systems and advanced algorithmic concepts to facilitate analysis of diverse, pertinent data sources including traditional bio-surveillance data sources as well as social media inputs. A central challenge in this development effort is a practical, effective, method to test these prototype systems. This presentation discusses a simulation-based testbed to allow quantitative evaluation of analytical methods through controlled injection of simulated outbreak-related information into test data streams.

Objective:

To develop a software toolset to serve as a flexible test environment for bio-surveillance systems by injecting controlled, simulation-based, data modifications into a variety of traditional and non-traditional bio-surveillance sources.

Submitted by elamb on

The National Strategy for Biosurveillance defines biosurveillance as 'the process of gathering, integrating, interpreting, and communicating essential information related to all-hazards threats or disease activity affecting human, animal, or plant health to achieve early detection and warning, contribute to overall situational awareness of the health aspects of an incident, and to enable better decision-making at all levels.' However, the strategy leaves unanswered how 'essential information' is to be identified and integrated, or what the metrics qualify information as being 'essential'. Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT), a type of multi-criteria decision analysis, provides a structured approach that can offer solutions to this problem. While the use of MAUT has been demonstrated in a variety of fields, this method has never been applied to decision support in biosurveillance. We have developed a decision support analytic framework using MAUT that can facilitate identifying data streams for use in biosurveillance. We applied this framework to the problem of evaluating data streams for use in a global infectious disease surveillance system.

Objective

To describe how multi-criteria decision analysis can be applied to identifying essential biosurveillance information and demonstrate feasibility by applying it to prioritize data streams.

Submitted by elamb on

The International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS) community comprises a large pool of global expertise. Essential to the ISDS mission of advancing the science and practice of disease surveillance is understanding and setting priorities for research and best practices in public health monitoring. To this end, an ISDS workgroup developed an online survey to identify and prioritize the technical and policy issues of the ISDS community. Through analysis, the Survey will identify respondents' perceptions of opportunities in the area of analytical methodologies.

Objective

The objective of the '2013 Biosurveillance Technical Opportunity Prioritization Survey' (Survey) is to gather input from the ISDS community on the current landscape and prioritization of data sources and analytical issues in the field of biosurveillance.

Submitted by elamb on

The field of syndromic surveillance has received increased attention over the past decade as an expansion of traditional disease detection methods. There is, however, little or no consensus, regarding a standard definition encompassing the full scope of the term 'syndromic surveillance'. Several researchers have proposed at least 36 alternative names to differentiate various forms of syndromic surveillance but none has taken hold (including early warning, health indicator surveillance, enhanced surveillance, among others). Katz et al presented a redefining of syndromic surveillance as two overarching categories of 'syndrome based'“ versus 'syndrome non-specific'“ surveillance1. In addition, the Meaningful Use Stage 2 standard for syndromic surveillance includes both pre-diagnostic and diagnostic data elements, further broadening the scope of this surveillance method.

Objective

To provide a forum for stakeholders from various sectors of syndromic surveillance research and practice to discuss and establish a more accurate and comprehensive yet succinct definition of syndromic surveillance, based on lessons learned and innovations in public health surveillance practice.

Submitted by elamb on
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