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In early May of 2013, two chemical spills occurred within high schools in Atlantic county. These incidents, occurring within a week of each other, highlighted the need to strengthen statewide syndromic surveillance of illnesses caused by such exposures. In response to these spills, a new 'chemical exposure' classifier was created in EpiCenter, New JerseyÕs syndromic surveillance system, to track future events by monitoring registration chief complaint data taken from emergency department visits. The primary objective behind creation of the new classifier is to provide local epidemiologists with prompt notification once EpiCenter detects an abnormal numbers of chemical exposure cases.

Objective

To describe the development of a new chemical exposure classifier in New Jersey's syndromic surveillance system (EpiCenter).

Submitted by elamb on

On July 11, 2012, New Jersey Department of Health (DOH) Communicable Disease Service (CDS) surveillance staff received email notification of a statewide anomaly in EpiCenter for Paralysis. Two additional anomalies followed within three hours. Since Paralysis Anomalies are uncommon, staff initiated an investigation to determine if there was an outbreak or other event of concern taking place. Also at question was whether receipt of multiple anomalies in such a short time span was statistically or epidemiologically significant.

Objective

To describe the investigation of a statewide anomaly detected by a newly established state syndromic surveillance system and usage of that system.

Submitted by dbedford on

EpiCenter, NJ’s statewide syndromic surveillance system, collects ED registration data. The system uses chief complaint data to classify ED visits into syndrome categories and provides alerts to state and local health departments for surveillance anomalies. After the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) started collecting medical notes including triage notes, which contain more specific ED visit information than chief complaint, from 10 EDs to strengthen HAI syndromic surveillance efforts. In 2017, the NJDOH was aware of one NJ resident whose surgical site was infected following a cosmetic procedure outside of the US. This event triggered an intensive data mining using medical notes collected in EpiCenter. The NJDOH staff searched one week of medical notes data in EpiCenter with a specific keyword to identify additional potential cases of surgical-site infections (SSI) that could be associated with medical tourism.

Objective:

Medical notes provide a rich source of information that can be used as additional supporting information for healthcare-associated infection (HAI) investigations. The medical notes from 10 New Jersey (NJ) emergency departments (ED) were searched to identify cases of surgical-site infections (SSI).

Submitted by elamb on
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