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Surveillance Systems

Description

VA began using ESSENCE as a public health surveillance tool in 2005. The system offered alerting capability for pre-defined syndromes and querying capability for outpatient ICD-9 diagnosis codes. Herein, we highlight examples of how we have invested in upgrades to analytic capabilities and expanded data sources available to ESSENCE in order to augment the overall utility of this system within VA.

Objective

To describe VA’s experience developing innovative and alternative uses of a surveillance system and improve the overall value proposition of this tool for the agency.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Description

Two major heat waves occurred in France in July 2015. A first episode characterized by early onset, intensity, large geographical coverage and duration occurred between 29th of June 8th of July. A second episode less intense was localized on the South-East of the country from 15th to 23rd of July.

The French heat warning system has been operating by InVS since 2004 as part of the French National Heat Wave Plan. Warnings are based on meteorological forecasts and on real-time follow-up of specific health indicators to support decision-making. The evolutions in emergency health care facilities during the July heat waves are presented.

Objective

To present the evolution of heat-related pathologies during heat waves occurring in July 2015 in France

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Description

Since the terrorist attacks against the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, France has activated the highest level of its national anti-terrorist security plan. A new terrorist attack occurred the 26th of June at 9:50 AM in a gas production plant located in the industrial area of Saint Quentin Fallavier nearby Lyon (East -South-of France). The plant produces several different chemical products like gas and plastics and employed 40 people. The attack resulted in an explosion followed by fire. The French Institute for Public Health Surveillance (InVS) was alerted at 11 AM and decided to implement with its Rhône-Alpes regional office a protocol to timely assess the potential health impact on the population living or working around the attack area on emergency health care facilities (EHCF).

Objective

To timely assess the potential health impact on the population living or working in a terrorist attack area using syndromic surveillance

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Description

Current local, state, and national initiatives related to meaningful use and the modernization of electronic health records, and the growing availability of electronic information exchanges, have become important drivers to establishing syndromic surveillance systems. Effective implementation of electronic syndromic surveillance interfaces requires approaches that ensure the receipt of quality, timely, and reliable information.

While there are published specifications for the HL7 ADT message and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) validation tools, there has been little documentation about the necessary steps for a local public health department to validate and confirm that an interface that is producing consistent and quality information. The lack of effective validation efforts has led to incomplete or inconsistent data utilized by syndromic systems and their intended audiences.

The County of San Diego has developed and utilized a framework for validating new syndromic interfaces. This presentation will highlight several pragmatic methods to validate the HL7 message content, provide specific examples of validation, and describe the pitfalls that could result from a poorly validated syndromic interface.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Description

It is estimated that there are 1.7 million homeless individuals in the United States; 36% are families with children under the age of 18. Due to lack of resources, homeless individuals frequent emergency departments for immediate health care needs. Homeless individuals are hospitalized more often, and once hospitalized have longer lengths of stay and incur higher hospital costs compared to non-homeless individuals.

Objective

To analyze a homeless population, demographically and by health condition, over a 3-year time period who were admitted to an Albuquerque area hospital.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Description

In December 2013, an emergence of chikungunya was observed in the French Caribbean region. Starting on the Saint-Martin island, the epidemic of chikungunya spread in Martinique on December 2013. The first cases were then observed in Guadeloupe in December 2013 and in January 2014 in the French Guyana. A specific surveillance system has been implemented based on a sentinel general practitioners’ network enabling the estimation of the number of cases clinically suggestive. Severity of this arbovirus is assessed using the number of hospitalized cases. The syndromic surveillance system SurSaUD, based on the daily collection of two complementary morbidity data sources, is also implemented in these territories and has contributed to the surveillance of this outbreak.

Objective

Description of the temporal pattern of the chikungunya epidemic and the characteristics of patients in the French overseas territories of Americas using the French syndromic surveillance system SurSaUD.

 

Submitted by Magou on
Description

Despite numerous successes in using social media to detect food borne illness and to predict influenza trends, the use of social media as a public health tool has yet to gain widespread adoption. While social media data cannot directly diagnose illness, aggregate trends in symptom proliferation may readily be observed. Such trends may allow a health agency to watch for signs and symptoms related to target conditions within its jurisdiction. Further, social media surveillance offers a distinct advantage in immediacy and sensitivity as it is not dependent upon infected individuals seeking care for reportable illnesses and as such information is not delayed by the handling, transfer, and processing of reports. These advantages may enable the earlier preparation and initiation of scaled response sequences during public health emergencies. Such data may also yield additional evidence through shared symptoms, rumors, and observations crucial to an epidemiological investigation.

Objective

To formally introduce ChatterGrabber, an open source, natural language processing based toolset for public health social media surveillance. ChatterGrabber is designed to collect and categorize a high volume of content at a low cost, providing a readily deployable solution for Epidemiologists to track emergent outbreaks in the field and a signal for syndromic surveillance.

 

Submitted by Magou on
Description

Public health surveillance guides efforts to detect and monitor disease and injuries, assess the impact of interventions and assist in the management of and recovery from large-scale public health incidents. Today’s ever-present, media-hungry environment pressures public health scientists, researchers and frontline practitioners to provide information, on an almost instantaneous basis, responsive to public and policy maker concerns about specific geographies and specific populations. Actions informed by surveillance information take many forms, such as policy changes, new program interventions, public communications and investments in research. Local, state and federal public health professionals, government leaders, public health partners and the public are dependent on high quality, timely and actionable public health surveillance data. With a charge from the CDC Director, this Surveillance Strategy aims to improve CDC’s overall surveillance capabilities, and by extension those of the public health system at large. The Strategy guides efforts to make essential surveillance systems more adaptable to the rapidly changing technology landscape, more versatile in meeting demands for expanding knowledge about evolving threats to health, and more able to meet the demands for timely and populationspecific and geographically specific surveillance information. The Strategy will also facilitate work to consolidate systems, eliminate unnecessary redundancies in reporting, and reduce reporting burden. These expectations compel this strategy and argue for CDC to lead the public health system in improving the timeliness and availability, as well as the quality and specificity of surveillance data to CDC programs, STLT agencies, and other stakeholders.

Objective

This presentation aims to share the CDC Surveillance Strategy’s goals, initiatives and activities. The surveillance strategy describes how CDC will: 

  • enhance accountability, resource use, workforce and innovation for surveillance by establishing a Surveillance Leadership Board, a surveillance workforce plan, and an innovation consortium;
  •  accelerate the utilization of emerging tools and approaches to improve the availability, quality, and timeliness of surveillance data by establishing enhanced HIT policy engagement, HIT vendor forums, and informatics innovation projects; and 
  • initiate four cross cutting surveillance system initiatives to improve surveillance by addressing data availability, system usability, redundancies, and incorporation of new information technologies
Submitted by Magou on
Description

The New York City (NYC) syndromic surveillance system has monitored syndromes from NYC emergency department (ED) visits since 2001, using the temporal and spatial scan statistic in SaTScan for aberration detection. Since our syndromic system was initiated, alternative methods have been proposed for outbreak identification. Our goal was to evaluate methods for outbreak detection and apply the best performing method(s) to our daily analysis of syndromic data.

Objective

To evaluate temporal and spatial aberration detection methods for implementation in a local syndromic surveillance system.

Submitted by Magou on
Description

One of ASTHO’s key goals is to help its jurisdictions meet member needs for technical assistance, including making informed decisions about their syndromic surveillance options. To help them make such decisions, ASTHO worked with Booz Allen to create a decision analysis model, which factors in both a Value of Information (VOI) model and a Return on Investment (ROI) model. The model provides a dashboard of its outputs, which is a simple, easy-to-understand comparative view of multiple syndromic surveillance investment scenarios.

Objective

Provide a demonstration of the recently developed prototype decision analysis model for syndromic surveillance investments. The roundtable will be used to discuss the model, obtain feedback on its usefulness, and brainstorm future uses and improvements.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on