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Respiratory

Description

Traditionally, public health surveillance departments collect, analyze, interpret, and package information into static surveillance reports for distribution to stakeholders. This resource-intensive production and dissemination process has major shortcomings that impede end users from optimally utilizing this information for public health action. Often, by the time traditional reports are ready for dissemination they are outdated. Information can be difficult to find in long static reports and there is no capability to interact with the data by users. Instead, ad hoc data requests are made, resulting in inefficiencies and delays.

Use of electronic dashboards for surveillance reporting is not new. Many public health departments have worked with information technology (IT) contractors to develop such technically sophisticated products requiring IT expertise. The technology and tools now exist to equip the public health workforce to develop in-house surveillance dashboards, which allow for unprecedented speed, flexibility, and cost savings while meeting the needs of stakeholders. At Alberta Health Services (AHS), in-house, end-to-end dashboard development infrastructure has been established that provides epidemiologists and data analysts full capabilities for effective and timely reporting of surveillance information. 

Objective

To address the limitations of traditional static surveillance reporting by developing in-house infrastructure to create and maintain interactive surveillance dashboards. 

Submitted by Magou on
Description

Since the emergence of avian influenza A(H7N9) virus in 2013, extensive surveillances have been established to monitor the human infection and environmental contamination with avian influenza virus in southern China. At the end of 2015, human infection with influenza A(H5N6) virus was identified in Shenzhen for the first time through these surveillances. These surveillances include severe pneumonia screening, influenza like illness (ILI) surveillance, follow-up on close contact of the confirmed case, serological survey among poultry workers, environment surveillance in poultry market.

Objective

To determine avian influenza A(H5N6) virus infection in human and environment using extensive surveillances. To evaluate the prevalence of H5N6 infection among high risk population. 

Submitted by Magou on

The surveillance task when faced with small area health data is more complex than in the time domain alone. Both changes in time and space must be considered. Such questions as ‘where will the infection spread to next?’ and, ‘when will the infection arrive here’, or ‘when do we see the end of the epidemic?’ are all spatially specific questions that are commonly of concern for both the public and public health agencies.  Hence both spatial and temporal dimensions of the surveillance task must be considered.