Surveillance Evaluation

Modern public health surveillance systems have great potential for improving public health. However, evaluating the performance of surveillance systems is challenging because examples of baseline disease distribution in the population are limited to a few years of data collection. Agent-based simulations of infectious disease transmission in highly detailed synthetic populations can provide unlimited realistic baseline data.

Objective

To create, implement, and test a flexible methodology to generate detailed synthetic surveillance data providing realistic geo-spatial and temporal clustering of baseline cases.

Chlamydia, a sexually transmitted infection which can lead to adverse reproductive health outcomes if untreated, is the most commonly reported nationally notifable disease in the United States.[1] Complete and valid demographic, geographic, and diagnosis-related data are needed to identify trends, describe populations most impacted by disease, identify inequities, and inform and evaluate prevention activities.

Objective

To assess the completeness of key variables included in Chlamydia trachomatis (chlamydia) case report data submitted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during 2012.

To explore the practicality of using a spatio-temporal scan statistic within a health board, rather than academic or national setting.

We conducted a study to examine the suitability of the data collected at the local emergency departments for use in syndromic surveillance.

The development of a real time surveillance system for Forces on duty areas is one of the 5 initiatives of the November 2002 Prague’s NATO meeting. The French Military Health Service has decided to implement a military demonstrator within Forces in operations in a tropical area. This military prototype has three main objectives : i) to study the feasability of real time surveillance system within Forces in operations ii) to evaluate the benefit of such a system and iii) to develop a interoperable system for NATO. This French real time system has been developped by a multidisciplinary team, with military people but also with civilian experts from Pasteur Institute and Mediterranean University of Marseille.

Objective

This paper describes the new real time surveillance system, which has been installed within the French Forces in French Guiana.

To evaluate whether syndromic surveillance can detect localized outbreaks of lower-respiratory infections (LRI'­s) with limited numbers of alarms in time.

To evaluate the added value of a syndromic surveillance system in detecting a large severe respiratory disease outbreak with a point-source we used the Legionnaires' disease (LD) outbreak of 1999 in the Netherlands as a case-study. We retrospectively simulated a prospective syndromic surveillance for space-time clusters of patients with pneumonia in hospital records to detect the LD outbreak.

Evaluation is a major topic in order to enhance syndromic surveillance. In May 2004, a CDC working group developed a framework for evaluating public health surveillance systems for early detection of outbreaks. This framework has been used to evaluate some civilian and also some military syndromic surveillance systems, as the French system 2SE FAG (Surveillance spatiale des épidémies au sein des forces armées en Guyane) and the UK system RMS (Real time Medical Surveillance). Those systems have been set up since the 2002 Prague summit. But because the objectives and the functioning of those systems have some military specificities, the current CDC framework was not totally adapted for their evaluation. This study presented a proposal of a new framework for evaluating military syndromic surveillance systems.

Objective

The objective of this study was to propose a new framework for evaluating military surveillance systems for early detection of outbreaks. This one was based on the French and UK military real time surveillance systems.

Following the heat wave that scorched France in August 2003 a national daily gathering of mortality data was decided in link with the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee). Such gathering is based on Public Records Office equipped with the appropriate software in order to transmit their data to Insee. Then data received daily are transmitted automatically to the National Institut for Health Surveillance. Data are encrypted and transmitted 7 days per week through direct FTP in a pretermined format. For each death certificate, the following information are recorded: zip code, age, sex, date of death.

A pilot test started in June, 2004 with 147 cities for one year. The good evaluation of the system pushed to enlarge it to all eligible cities in France. The enlarged system started on November 1, 2005 and concerned 1,152 Public Records Office which represents around 75% of the daily French mortality.

Reunion Island (population 770,000) is being affected by the most important outbreak of chikungunya disease ever described in the medical literature. Between March 1, 2005 and May 30, 2006, an estimated 255,000 cases have been reported in this French territory located in the Indian Ocean. The vast majority of the cases have been occurring from mid-December, with a peak of 45000 cases week 5, 2006.

The disease is a self-limiting febrile viral disease characterised by arthralgia or arthritis. The symptoms may last for several months but recovery was, until now, considered universal.

Objective

This paper describes the on going surveillance of mortality during the largest outbreak of chikungunya ever known. It is based on a new automatic gathering of mortality data and it is also the first opportunity to test this system in real condition.