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Public Health Surveillance

Description

The Death Certificate Surveillance was implemented in October 2001 to enhance New Hampshire's ability to monitor for bioterrorism and other public health threats, such as communicable diseases and chemical exposures. In 2003, this surveillance system was automated. Death certificates become available for review by disease surveillance staff within 24 hours of filing. Learning objectives: 1. Discuss the value of death certificate surveillance in detecting communicable disease 2. Explain the death certificate review process 3. Describe how death certificate surveillance can be automated.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

The prompt detection of disease outbreaks is a major concern to public health as it has the potential to reduce morbidity and mortality (1). Real-time syndromic surveillance uses existing non-traditional data for timely analysis and feedback to those responsible for investigations and follow-up of potential outbreaks (2). Recent studies have suggested that integrating multiple data sources can significantly improve detection accuracy of syndromic surveillance systems, but more work is needed to explore the most effective means of said integration and what types of data streams give the greatest benefit (3;4).

Objective:

This paper will examine the temporal relationship between Ontarioís emergency department (ED) visits and telephone health line (Telehealth Ontario) call volume for respiratory illnesses, in an effort to test the feasibility of using Telehealth Ontarioís system for real-time surveillance.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Influenza epidemics occur seasonally, impose a high economic burden on the health care system, and are responsible for substantial morbidity and mortality (1). The past century has seen three influenza A pandemics with variable severity. The recent outbreaks of avian influenza involving different virus strains in Asia, North America and the Netherlands, indicates the increasing potential of a new influenza pandemic (2). Public and political awareness needs to be strengthened while public health surveillance strategies need significant improvements if we are to mitigate such a potentially devastating worldwide pandemic, and provide the healthcare system with as much early warning as possible to enhance preparedness. Telehealth Ontario is a provincial telephone helpline for health information staffed by nurses that, if monitored on a real-time basis, has the potential to identify increases in seasonal respiratory infection rates. A recent study suggested that Telehealth Ontario respiratory calls reflect the seasonality of diagnosed respiratory illnesses in emergency departments (van Dijk et al., unpublished data), but an estimation of how respiratory pathogens contribute to Telehealth Ontario’s respiratory complaint calls has not been studied.

Objective:

This paper will explore the possibility and utility of monitoring Telehealth Ontario respiratory calls as an efficient public health influenza strategy for early warning by comparing this data source to provincial viral lab data.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

 Internet-based technologies have been used to assist in disease surveillance and reporting.  The Public Health Agency of Canada operates the Global Public Health Information Network, credited with early notification of many outbreaks (including SARS) through automated multilingual analysis of internet media sources such as news wires and web pages(www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/media/nr-rp/2004/2004_gphinrmispbk_e.html). An innovative web-based forum (www.RUsick2.msu.edu) collects foodborne illness reports from visitors to a web site and has been used to identify foodborne outbreaks in Michigan (1).   Health-related topics are among the most popular Internet searches. Many individuals experiencing symptoms of illness conduct Internet searches prior to seeking medical attention.  An early site-based study found limited utility to monitoring of Internet queries (2), but recent developments merit re-examination of the potential of internet searches for public health surveillance purposes.

Objective:

To evaluate whether trends in internet searches might provide useful data for public health surveillance.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

There is growing interest in leveraging available health information exchange (HIE) infrastructures to improve public health surveillance (1). The Health Information Technology for Clinical and Economic Health Act and Meaningful Use criteria for electronic health record (EHR) systems are among the factors driving the development, adoption and use of HIEs. HIEs deliver or make accessible clinical and administrative data as patients are admitted, discharged, and transferred across hospitals, clinics, medical centers, counties, states and regions (2). While several HIE infrastructures exist (3), there is little evidence on the engagement in HIE initiatives by state and local health agencies.

Objective

To characterize state and local health agency relationships with health information exchange organizations.

 

Submitted by uysz on
Description

The S&I Framework is an Office of National Coordinator (ONC) initiative designed to support individual working groups who focus on a specific interoperability challenge. One of these working groups within the S&I Framework is the PHRI, which is using the S&I Framework as a platform for a community-led project focused on simplifying public health reporting and ensuring EHR interoperability with public health information systems. PHRI hopes to create a new public health reporting objective for Meaningful Use Stage 3 that is broader than the current program-specific objectives and will lay the ground work for all public health reporting in the future. To date, the initiative received over 30 descriptions of different types of public health reporting that were then grouped into 5 domain categories. Each domain category was decomposed into component elements and commonalities were identified. The PHRI is now working to reconstruct a single model of public health reporting through a consensus process that will soon lead to a pilot demonstration of the most ready reporting types. This panel will outline progress, challenges, and next steps of the initiative as well as describe how the initiative may affect a standard language for biosurveillance reporting.

Objective

The objective of this panel is to inform the ISDS community of the progress made in the Standards & Interoperability (S&I) Framework Public Health Reporting Initiative (PHRI). Also, it will provide some context of how the initiative will likely affect biosurveillance reporting in Meaningful Use Stage 3 and future harmonization of data standards requirements for public health reporting

Submitted by ynwang@ufl.edu on
Description

The International Society for Disease Surveillance held its eleventh annual conference in San Diego on December 4th and 5th, 2012, under the theme Expanding Collaborations to Chart a New Course in Public Health Surveillance.  During these two days, practitioners and researchers across many disciplines gathered to share best practices, lessons learned and cutting edge approaches to timely disease surveillance.  A record number of abstracts were received, reviewed and presented – the schedule included 99 orals, 4 panels, 94 posters, 5 roundtables and 12 system demonstrations.  Presenters represented 24 different countries from Africa, North and South America, Europe, and Asia .  Topics covered included, but were not limited to, statistical methods for outbreak detection, border health, data quality, evaluation of novel data streams, influenza surveillance, best practices and policies for information sharing, social network analysis, data mining techniques, surveillance during weather events and mass gatherings, syndrome development, and novel uses of syndromic surveillance data.  There were also discussions on the impact of regulations and standards development on disease surveillance, including Meaningful Use and the International Health Regulations.

Submitted by Magou on
Description

Understanding the relationship between mental illness and medical comorbidity is an important aspect of public health surveillance. In 2004, an estimated one fourth of the US adults reported having a mental illness in the previous year (1). Studies showed that mental illness exacerbates multiple chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and asthma (2). BioSense is a national electronic public health surveillance system developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that receives, analyzes and visualizes electronic health data from civilian hospital emergency departments (EDs), outpatient and inpatient facilities, Veteran Administration (VA) and Department of Defense (DoD) healthcare facilities. Although the system is designed for early detection and rapid assessment of all-hazards health events, BioSense can also be used to examine patterns of healthcare utilization.



Objective:

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the associated burden of mental illness and medical comorbidity using BioSense data 20082011.

Submitted by Magou on
Description

User-generated content enabled by social media tools provide a stream of data that augment surveillance data. Current use of social media data focuses on identification of disease events. However, once identification occurs, the leveraging of social media in monitoring disease events remains unclear. To clarify this, we constructed a framework mapped to the surveillance cycle, to understand how social media can improve public health actions.

Objective

Recent scholarship has focused on using social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) as a secondary data stream for disease event detection. However, reported implementations such as (4) underscore where the real value may lie in using social media for surveillance. We provide a framework to illuminate uses of social media beyond passive observation, and towards improving active responses to public health threats.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Description

Medical claims and EHR data sources offer the potential to ascertain disease and health risk behavior prevalence and incidence, evaluate the use of clinical services, and monitor changes related to public health interventions. Passage of the HITECH Act of 2009 supports the availability of standardized EHR data for use by public health officials to obtain actionable information. While full adoption of EHRs is still years away, there are presently publicly- and commerciallyavailable EHR and medical claims data sets that could enhance public health surveillance at a national, regional and state level. The purposes of this evaluation were to i.) demonstrate the feasibility of gaining access to such data, ii.) evaluate their ability to augment current surveillance activities by developing measures for twenty separate healthcare indicators (e.g., HIV screening), iii.) evaluate each data source across a set of criteria needed for an effective surveillance system, and iv.) assess the ability of the data sources to evaluate changes in healthcare utilization and preventive services that may be a result of the 2009 Health Reform legislation.

Objective:

To assess the utility of inpatient and ambulatory clinical data compiled by public and commercial sources to enhance the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s surveillance activities.

 

Submitted by Magou on