The utility of syndromic surveillance systems to augment health departments’ traditional surveillance for naturally occurring disease has not been prospectively evaluated.
Objective
In this interim report we describe the signals detected by a real-time ambulatory care-based syndromic surveillance system and discuss their relationship to true outbreaks of illness.
To compare the ability to detect disease outbreaks of separate and combined data streams from ambulatory care and emergency department from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.
Objective: To enable improved health surveillance and clinical decision support within ambulatory Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems.
We sought to compare ambulatory care (AC) and emergency department (ED) data for the detection of clusters of lower gastrointestinal illness, using AC and ED data and AC+ED data combined, from two geographically separate health plans participating in the National Bioterrorism Syndromic Surveillance Demonstration Program [1].
Discusses the current state of syndromic surveillance using inpatient and ambulatory clinical data in the United States and the potential utility of the data. The Meaningful Use Stages 2 and 3 regulations incentivize the use of these data sources. Existing systems effectively perform a range of activities from influenza-like illness surveillance to heart disease risk factor surveillance. With further development, ambulatory and inpatient data could become an integral part of syndromic surveillance practice.
Objective
To document the current evidence base for the use of electronic health record (EHR) data for syndromic surveillance using emer- gency department, urgent care clinic, hospital inpatient, and ambula- tory clinical care data.
MUse will make EHR data increasingly available for public health surveillance. For Stage 2, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulations will require hospitals and offer an option for eligible professionals to provide electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health. Together, these data can strengthen public health surveillance capabilities and population health outcomes (Figure 1). To facilitate the adoption and effective use of these data to advance population health, public health priorities and system capabilities must shape standards for data exchange. Input from all stakeholders is critical to ensure the feasibility, practicality, and, hence, adoption of any recommendations and data use guidelines.
Objective
To develop national Stage 2 Meaningful Use (MUse) recommendations for syndromic surveillance using hospital inpatient and ambulatory clinical care electronic health record (EHR) data
During summer 2012, Washington State Department of Health (WA DOH) surveyed ILINet providers and found that more than half either utilize their electronic medical record system (EMRS) to gather and report weekly ILINet data, or intend to implement queries to do so in the future. There are a variety of EMRS being used state-wide, and providers that currently utilize these systems to report ILINet data apply a wide range of methods to query their data. There exists great interest in the evaluation of ambulatory care data within the context of Meaningful Use and little research is published in this area. WA DOH sought to evaluate electronic data from WA outpatient clinic networks in order to determine if a syndromic ILI definition previously validated for emergency department (ED) data accurately identified ILI visits in electronic ambulatory care data.
Objective:
To determine if a syndromic influenza-like illness (ILI) definition previously validated for emergency department (ED) data accurately identified ILI visits in electronic ambulatory care data.