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Early Notification

Florida Department of Health has developed a statewide syndromic surveillance system based on the Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE). Authorized users can currently access data from the Florida Poison Information Center Network (FPICN), Emergency Room chief complaints, Florida reportable disease system (Merlin) and the Florida death records through ESSENCE under one portal. The purpose of this paper is to summarize efforts to enhance statewide real-time chemical surveillance by incorporating FPICN data into ESSENCE.

Referenced File
Submitted by hparton on

Regional disease surveillance systems allow users the ability to view large amounts of population health information and examine automated alerts that suggest increased disease activity. These systems require users to view and interpret which of these alerts or data streams are epidemiologically important. This interpretation is valuable information that may benefit other users. In addition to the daily interpretation of data done by users, the ability to communicate local concerns and findings during a public health event to neighboring jurisdictions is of great public health importance. Public health officials also need constant situational awareness and a venue to share their concerns about increases in disease activity before a health emergency is declared. The Event Communications Component (ECC) was created to provide this venue. The ECC was developed for the National Capital Region (NCR) public health surveillance network to facilitate the need for users to communicate. The NCR system is an operational multi-jurisdictional biosurveillance system employed in the District of Columbia and in surrounding Maryland and Virginia counties. NCR users include epidemiologists and public health officials from different levels of government. The ECC has been in operation for a year in the NCR system. ECC 2.0 is being developed to improve on the original version’s capabilities and solve its shortcomings.

 

Objective

Identify areas of improvement and establish design goals of ECC 2.0. These design goals include: the incorporation of comment centric design versus event centric, automatic notification of new events/comments, the use of action oriented concern levels and user interface improvements. Focus design goals by utilizing prototyping and user group reviews. Develop ECC 2.0 and integrate it into the NCR system.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene conducts enhanced surveillance using the Electronic Surveillance System for Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics (ESSENCE). The current version of ESSENCE for the National Capital Region consists of information from multiple data sources for syndromic surveillance in Maryland, Washington DC, and Virginia. Chief complaint data from emergency department (ED) visits and over-the-counter (OTC) medications are categorized into syndromes and alerts are generated when observed counts are outside the expected range. ESSENCE alerts users to unusual counts of a particular syndrome based on both temporal and spatial distribution for enhanced surveillance of disease activity. While several studies have examined the usefulness of ED data to detect the start of the influenza season, a lack of information exists on the usability of OTC sales to detect influenza. OTC data may provide an earlier alert to illness than other sources, if people self-treat with OTC medications.

 

Objective

This study examines the ability of syndromic surveillance data to detect seasonal influenza. ED visits for influenza-like illness and OTC flu medication sales are evaluated to determine whether these data sources are useful in the detection of the influenza season. Data sources that can detect seasonal influenza may also be used to help detect the start of pandemic influenza.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

An important problem in biosurveillance is the early detection and characterization of outdoor aerosol releases of B. anthracis. The Bayesian Aerosol Release Detector (BARD) is a system for simulating, detecting and characterizing such releases. BARD integrates the analysis of medical surveillance data and meteorological data. The existing version of BARD does not account for the fact that many people might be exposed at a location other than their residence due to mobility. Incorporation of a mobility model in biosurveillance has been investigated by several other researchers. In this paper, we describe a refined version of the BARD simulation algorithm which incorporates a model of work-related mobility and report the results of an experiment to measure the effect of this refinement.

 

Objective 

To refine the simulation algorithm used in the BARD so that it takes into account the work-related mobility and to compare the refined simulator with the existing one.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

On June 7, 2008, federal food protection and public health agencies alerted consumers of a nationwide outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul infections. As of June 30, 2008, 851 persons infected with Salmonella Saintpaul with the same genetic fingerprint had been identified in 36 states and the District of Columbia since April 20081. On June 13, 2008, Maryland confirmed its first case of Salmonella Saintpaul infection matching the national outbreak strain and as of June 30, 2008, 29 cases of Salmonella related to the outbreak have been identified.

 

Objective 

The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of syndromic surveillance emergency department data as a tool for enhanced case finding of outbreak-related illnesses.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

A syndromic surveillance system has been implemented at Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington Public Health in Kingston Ontario as part of a pilot project funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care – Public Health Division. The information captured by the Real-time Outbreak and Disease Surveillance-based syndromic surveillance system includes Febrile Respiratory Illness screening results (implemented since SARS) for Emergency Department (ED) visits and information detailing hospital admissions.

 

Objective

To use an electronic real-time ED monitoring tool to involve public health, acute care and laboratory stakeholders in an integrated alerting and response process for community-wide influenza.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

Epidemiologists, public health agencies and scientists increasingly augment traditional surveillance systems with alternative data sources such as, digital surveillance systems utilizing news reports and social media, over-the-counter medication sales, and school absenteeism. Similar to school absenteeism, an increase in reservation cancellations could serve as an early indicator of social disruption including a major public health event. In this study, we evaluated whether a rise in restaurant table availabilities could be associated with an increase in disease incidence.

 

Objective

The objective of this study is to evaluate whether trends in online restaurant table reservations can be used as an early indicator for a disease outbreak.

Submitted by hparton on

Drug sales data as an early indicator in syndromic surveillance has attracted particular interest in recent years, however previous studies were mostly conducted in developed countries or areas. In China, many people (around 60%) choose self-medication as their first option when they encounter a health problem, and electronic sales information system is gradually used by retail pharmacies, which makes drug sales data become a promising data source for syndromic surveillance in China.

 

Objective

To use an unconventional data - pharmaceutical sales surveillance for the early detection of respiratory and gastrointestinal epidemics in rural China.

Submitted by hparton on

Norovirus infection results in considerable morbidity in the United States where an estimated 21 million illnesses, 70,000 hospitalizations, and 800 deaths are caused by NV annually. Additionally, NV is responsible for approximately 50% of foodborne outbreaks. Between January 2008 and June 2012, 875 NV outbreaks were reported to the Virginia Department of Health (VDH). To assist in detecting possible disease outbreaks such as NV, VDH utilizes the web-based Electronic Surveillance System for Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE) to monitor and detect public health events across Virginia. ESSENCE performs automated parsing of chief complaint text into 10 syndrome categories, including a non-specific GI syndrome that serves as a proxy for GI illnesses like NV.

 

Objective

To assess the relationship between emergency department and urgent care center chief complaint data for gastrointestinal illness and reported norovirus (NV) outbreaks to develop an early warning tool for NV outbreak activity. The tool will provide an indicator of increasing NV outbreak activity in the community allowing for earlier public health action to mitigate NV outbreaks.

Submitted by hparton on

Early Notification Detection Systems have taken a critical role in providing early notice of disease outbreaks. To improve the detection methods for disease outbreaks, many detection methods have been created and implemented. However, there is limited information on the effectively of syndromic surveillance in Thailand. Knowing the performance, strengths and weakness of these surveillance systems in providing early warning for outbreaks will increase disease outbreak detection capacity in Thailand.

Objective:

This paper presents an investigation using early notification methods to enhancing epidemic detection in syndromic surveillance data from royal Thai army in Thailand.

Submitted by elamb on
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