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Displaying results 1 - 8 of 13
  • Evaluating the Performance of a Spatial Scan Statistic Using Simulated Outbreak Characteristics

    Content Type: Abstract

    Research evaluating the use of spatial data for surveillance purposes is ongoing and evolving. As spatial methods evolve, it is important to characterize their effectiveness in real-world settings. Assessing the performance of… read more
    … outbreak data (signal) into actual background visit data. These studies focused on either temporal data, a … synthetic outbreak data (signal) into actual back- ground visit data.1,2,3 These studies focused on either temporal … and longitude using ESRI ArcGIS 8.3. For each week of visit data we used a cluster creation tool4 to insert one of …
  • Return to Public Health- Undeliverable letters of Communicable Disease Patients

    Content Type: Abstract

    Preventing communicable disease spread is a primary objective for public health (PH). Reaching contagious people in a timely manner is essential to limit disease spread. Notifying patients of their infectious status also serves as an official… read more
    … We examined communicable disease cases with undelivered mail to ascertain failure causes and rates. Objective … We examined communicable disease cases with undelivered mail to ascertain failure causes and rates. Objective …
  • Clinical Versus Public Health Perceptions of Notifiable Disease Reporting Burden

    Content Type: Abstract

    The importance transmitting clinical information to public health for disease surveillance is well-documented. Conventional reporting processes require health care providers to complete paper-based notifiable condition reports which are transmitted… read more
    … condition reports which are transmitted by fax and mail to public health agencies. These processes result in … condition reports which are transmitted by fax and mail to public health agencies. These processes result in …
  • Operational Considerations and Early Successes with a Statewide Public Health Surveillance System

    Content Type: Abstract

    In 2004, the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) partnered with the Regenstrief Institute to begin collecting syndromic data from 14 ED’s to monitor bioterrorism-related events and other public health emergencies. Today, Indiana’s public… read more
    … system (PHESS) receives approximately 5,000 daily ED visits as real-time HL7 formatted surveillance data from 55 … Indiana’s PHESS receives approximately 5,000 daily ED visits as real-time HL7 formatted surveillance data from 55 … deadly tornado struck southern Indiana in 2005. As the ED visit volumes climbed, no false alerts were triggered for …
  • The Day-of-the-Week Effect: A Study Across the Indiana Public Health Emergency Surveillance System

    Content Type: Abstract

    Complex, highly parameterized data models are often used to detect syndromic outbreaks. Unfortunately, such models can pose greater maintenance challenges as parameter variations increase. As such, our work focuses on whether day… read more
    … cations of chief complaint as well as the total daily visits. To compare across hospitals, we normalized the … or insignificantly across data sources. We found that visit rates by syndrome varied significantly by DoW Further, …
  • Privacy Protection versus Cluster Detection in Spatial Epidemiology

    Content Type: Abstract

    With the widespread deployment of near real time population health monitoring, there is increasing focus on spatial cluster detection for identifying disease outbreaks. These spatial epidemiologic methods rely on knowledge of patient location to… read more
    … tions, significant clusters contained fewer additional ED visit points (i.e., points that were not part of the … in small circle) and few additional points from the ED visits (red dots outside small circle). However, when the … with points at zip code centroids (right), many more ED visits were included in the detected cluster. CONCLUSIONS …
  • A Novel, Context-Sensitive Approach to Anonymizing Spatial Surveillance Data: Impact on Outbreak Detection

    Content Type: Abstract

    The use of spatially-based methods and algorithms in epidemiology and surveillance presents privacy challenges for researchers and public health agencies. We describe a novel method for anonymizing individuals in public health datasets, by… read more
    … set- ting. METHODS Cases were emergency department (ED) visits for respiratory illness. Baseline ED visit data were in- jected with artificially-created …
  • Enhancing Syndromic Surveillance through Cross-border Data Sharing

    Content Type: Abstract

    In the fall of 2006, the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) and the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) proactively began general discussions regarding surveillance issues of mutual interest. Both states, having operational… read more
    … gender, patient home zip code, admitted date and time, visit number, and free- text chief complaint. Approximately …