The Automated Hospital Emergency Department Data (AHEDD) System was designed to detect early indicators of bioterrorism and naturally occurring health risks. Initial development includes real-time data collection from four pilot hospitals, an automated syndromic surveillance application, and the capability of raw data analysis for further investigation and follow-up. This automated system frees hospital and State staff from manual reporting and analysis; and has a broad application for Public Health, collecting both chief complaint and diagnosis codes. As the project expands we plan to add the remaining 22 acute care hospitals; include poisoning, asthma, and injury surveillance; and assess electronic disease reporting from diagnosis codes and data linkage with other public health data stores, such as Environmental Health Tracking, and pre-hospital data.
Objective
This paper describes the use of technology to create an automated, real-time surveillance system with the capacity for early detection and alerting of potential health threats, and the capability to facilitate prompt investigation and increased efficiency for both New Hampshire hospital and the Division of Public Health Service resources.