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Displaying results 1 - 8 of 9
  • Increase in Pneumonia Cases as an Early Indicator of Severe and Pandemic Influenza Outbreak

    Content Type: Abstract

    Objective To enable the early detection of pandemic influenza, we have designed a system to differentiate between severe and mild influenza outbreaks. Historic information about previous pandemics suggested the evaluation of two… read more
    … and can be diagnosed immediately in a physician office visit, while a confirmed influenza diagnosis requires a … and can be diagnosed immediately in a physician office visit, while a confirmed influenza diagnosis requires a … outpatient office and hospital emergency room (ER) visits in selected counties in Virginia and Maryland, and …
  • The Development of Virtual Data for Syndromic Surveillance Exercises

    Content Type: Abstract

    On 27 April 2005, a simulated bioterrorist event—the aerosolized release of Francisella tularensis in the men’s room of luxury box seats at a sports stadium—was used to exercise the disease surveillance capability of the National Capital Region (NCR… read more
    … requirements and represented both ‘normal’ endemic visits (the background) as well as outbreak-specific records … requirements and represented both ‘normal’ endemic visits (the background) as well as outbreak-specific records … create the background data, emergency depart- ment (ED) visits were generated for each political unit in the NCR. ED …
  • Preparing Biosurveillance Data for Classic Monitoring

    Content Type: Abstract

    Modern surveillance systems use statistical process control (SPC) charts such as Cumulative Sum and Exponentially Weighted Moving Average charts for monitoring daily counts of such quantities as ICD-9 codes from ED visits,… read more
    … daily counts of such quantities as ICD-9 codes from ED visits, sales of medications, and doctors’ office visits. The working assumption is that such pre-clinical … daily counts of such quantities as ICD-9 codes from ED visits, sales of medications, and doctors’ office visits. …
  • Automated Time Series Forecasting for Biosurveillance

    Content Type: Abstract

    The statistical process control (SPC) community has developed a wealth of robust, sensitive monitoring methods in the form of control charts [1]. Although such charts have been implemented for a wide variety of health monitoring purposes [2], some… read more
    … systematic behavior. Time series forecasting methods may be used to remove this behavior by subtracting forecasts … systematic behavior. Time series forecasting methods may be used to remove this behavior by subtracting forecasts … systematic behavior. Time series forecasting methods may be used to remove this behavior by subtracting forecasts …
  • Implementation and Comparison of Preprocessing Methods for Biosurveillance Data

    Content Type: Abstract

    Modern biosurveillance relies on multiple sources of both prediagnostic and diagnostic data, updated daily, to discover disease outbreaks. Intrinsic to this effort are two assumptions: (1) the data being analyzed contain early indicators… read more
    … singularities” and will falsely report outbreaks when com- paring new counts to past low holiday values (2). … models, using past data from the same time of year (26). Note that ex- plicit modeling of seasonal variation … the response is trans- formed into a natural log (log(y)) is often appropriate. For our data series, we fit a …
  • Development and Evaluation of a Data-adaptive Algorithm for Univariate Temporal Biosurveillance Data

    Content Type: Abstract

    Numerous recent papers have evaluated algorithms for biosurveillance anomaly detection. Common essential problems in the disparate, evolving data environment include trends, day-of-week effects, and other systematic behavior.… read more
    … of authentic outpatient data covering 1402 days of clinic visit counts. Receiver operating characteristic curves were … in Medicine, available at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi- bin/fulltext/114131913/PDFSTART. 2. Brillman JC, et.al. Modeling emergency department visit patterns for infectious disease complaints: results …
  • Hybrid Probabilistic Modeling and Automated Data Fusion for Biosurveillance Applications

    Content Type: Abstract

    The increased threat of bioterrorism and naturally occurring diseases, such as pandemic influenza, continually forces public health authorities to review methods for evaluating data and reports. The objective of bio-surveillance is to automatically… read more
    … chief complaints, ICD-9 diagnosis codes, physician office visits, and pharmacy data. In addition, information such as …
  • Data-Adapted Temporal Alerting Algorithms for Routine Health Monitoring

    Content Type: Abstract

    This paper discusses selection of temporal alerting algorithms for syndromic surveillance to achieve reliable detection performance based on statistical properties and the epidemiological context of the input data. We used quantities calculated from… read more
    … alerting algorithms involve four steps: preconditioning, com- putation of expected values, computation of test sta- … From these results, simple data classification schemes may be automated to choose an effective algorithm for a … streams.” Mor- bidity Mortality Weekly Report 2005 Aug 26;54 Suppl:55-62. Further Info.: Howard Burkom, …