Of critical importance to the success of syndromic surveillance systems is the ability to collect data in a timely manner and thus ensure rapid detection of disease outbreaks. Most emergency department-based syndromic surveillance systems use information rou-tinely collected in patient care including patient chief complaints and physician diagnostic coding. These sources of data have been shown to have only limited sensitivities for the identification of cer-tain syndromes. Another potential source of information, which has not been previously studied, is the patient. Studies have shown that patients as well as parents can accurately report information about their own or their child’s illness. The value of of patient and parent self-reported informa-tion for disease surveillance systems has not been measured.
Objective
To determine whether patients and their families can directly provide medical information that enables syndrome classification.