Abstract
OBJECTIVES:
Reliable methods are needed to monitor the public health impact of changing laws and perceptions about marijuana. Structured and free-text emergency department (ED) visit data offer an opportunity to monitor the impact of these changes in near-real time. Our objectives were to (1) generate and validate a syndromic case definition for ED visits potentially related to marijuana and (2) describe a method for doing so that was less resource intensive than traditional methods.
The Syndromic Surveillance Consortium of Southeast Texas (SSCSeT) consists of 13 stakeholders who represent 19 counties or jurisdictions in the Texas Gulf Coast region and receives health data from over 100 providers. The Houston Health Department (HHD) maintains and operates the syndromic surveillance system for the Gulf Coast region since 2007. In preparation for Meaningful Use (MU) the HHD has adapted and implemented guidance and recommendations from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and others. HHDs goal is to make it possible for providers meet MU specification by facilitating the transmission of health related data for syndromic surveillance. The timing of the transition into MU overlaps with the change in syndromic surveillance systems.
Presenters
Eunice R. Santos, Wesley McNeely, Biru Yang and Raouf R. Arafat - Office of Surveillance and Public Health Preparedness, Houston Health Department, Houston, TX, USA
This report summarize the work of eight Regional Syndromic Surveillance Data Sharing Workshops that were held in Health and Human Services (HHS) Regions 1-7 and 10 from May 2013 through June 2015. The ultimate aim was to reach all ten HHS regions by June 2016.
Presentation starts at 34:15.
Public Health England uses data from four national syndromic surveillance systems to support public health programmes and identify unusual activity. Each system monitors a wide range of respiratory, gastrointestinal and other syndromes at a local, regional and national level. As a result, over 12,000 ‘signals’ (combining syndrome and geography) need to be assessed each day to identify aberrations. In this webinar I will describe how the ‘big data’ collected daily are translated into useful information for public health surveillance.
This annotated bibliography summarizes close to 50 articles on syndromic surveillance using EHR data from hospital and ambulatory settings. The bibliography is a valuable resource for both practitioners and researchers as they continue to assess the feasibility and utility of using new types of clinical data for syndromic surveillance analyses. As Meaningful Use progresses it is increasingly important to understand both the potential and the limitations of using ambulatory and hospital data for these purposes.
ISDS, in partnership with the Tufts University School of Medicine and Tufts Health Care Institute, has created an online course in syndromic surveillance. This program is designed to increase knowledge and foster collaboration between public health and clinical practitioners new to syndromic surveillance. This training is divided into four one-hour, self-paced modules and is available at no cost. Each module consists of a set of narrated slides.
ISDS, in partnership with the Tufts University School of Medicine and Tufts Health Care Institute, has created an online course in syndromic surveillance. This program is designed to increase knowledge and foster collaboration between public health and clinical practitioners new to syndromic surveillance. This training is divided into four one-hour, self-paced modules and is available at no cost. Each module consists of a set of narrated slides.