Use of Epidemiological Knowledge to Create Syndromic Surveillance Reports

Syndromic surveillance is an investigational approach used to monitor trends of illness in communities. It relies on pre-diagnostic health data rather than laboratory-confirmed clinical diagnoses. Its primary purpose is to detect disease outbreaks, incidents and unusual public health events earlier than possible with traditional public health surveillance methods.

Objective

To describe how epidemiological principles are utilized to distinguish a real alert from statistically significant alerts in order to monitor and create daily reports in the Miami-Dade County Health Department using Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community Based Epidemics.