An exploratory study of disease surveillance systems in Norway (original) (raw)
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Health Systems for Syndromic and Epidemiological Surveillance
2012
Health surveillance practices date back to decades ago. Traditionally, such practices to gather health data have been manual; more recently, however, computerized health information systems have been applied to enhance and facilitate health information acquisition for surveillance. The so-called health surveillance systems put in practice the systematic acquisition of health data, which is stored and processed for expert analysis. This chapter makes a survey of health surveillance systems dedicated to syndromic and epidemiological surveillance, identifying the different design and technological strategies adopted in the development of such systems. The aims of such a survey are: (1) to provide practitioners with some information about the collective expertise of health information system architects in the design and implementation of syndromic and epidemiological surveillance systems; and (2) to pave the way for the establishment of software product lines dedicated to such systems.
Public Health ICT Based Surveillance System
Advancements and Developments, 2012
The Public Health Surveillance System (PHSS) is defined as the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of health-related data essential to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice. It serves as an early warning system, guides public health policy and strategies, documents the impact of an intervention or progress towards specified public health targets/goals, and understands and monitors the epidemiology of a condition to set priorities and guide public health policy and strategies. For this purpose, the PHSS should: be ICT-based and comprehensive with clearly defined sources, volumes, and standards of data; include all the stakeholders with information they produce, with enough flexibility in the dynamic of constructing indicators; be safe and able to produce information on demand and on time; and be able to act as a risk management system by providing warnings/reminders/alerts to prevent unwanted events.
Canadian Journal of …, 2010
T imely surveillance information is increasingly important in this age of global climate change and globalization of travel, trade and commerce; infectious diseases can now emerge more rapidly and disperse more widely, as evidenced in the recent outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) 1-3 and Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (pH1N1). 4,5 Bioterrorism has also become a pressing public health concern since the 2001 anthrax attacks 6,7 in the United States. Early detection and timely notification of public health threats are key goals for syndromic surveillance 8-10 to make earlier investigation and targeted intervention possible-lessons learned from the well-publicized 1993 Cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee, USA 11 and the 2000 Campylobacter jejuni and Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak in Walkerton, Canada. 12 In both cases, retrospective analyses found earlier syndromic evidence 11,13 before traditional surveillance methods identified these outbreaks. Automated syndromic surveillance identifies probable cases or outbreaks using timely pre-diagnostic or pre-laboratory information, 8-10 whereas traditional methods either do not collect syndromic information or rely heavily on laborious manual collation of information derived from health care provider interviews, clinical diagnoses and laboratory results. The local health authority serving the Edmonton Zone of the Alberta Health Services (i.e., the City of Edmonton and surrounding area of Alberta) has rich electronic health information, and most of it was inadequately utilized previously for public health surveillance. Surveillance of communicable disease was historically paper-based, with manual electronic data entry; injury and chronic disease surveillance was conducted separately by different departments. No central surveillance system capable of automatically analyzing and reporting health data existed in the Edmonton
Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-Medical Informatics, 2012
Panic set out by newly emerging and re-emerging communicable diseases is taking a global dimension. A functional surveillance system is essential in all countries to provide the necessary information required for preventive action against communicable diseases and to make decisions on public health related issues. This article discusses the importance of such communicable disease surveillance systems (CDSS) and problems with existing CDSS. Most of the studies conducted were related to the attributes such as accuracy and speed of communicable disease notification. As a solution to overcome the difficulties experienced by the existing systems, some countries have introduced computerised systems for the surveillance of communicable diseases. Studies focused on the evaluation of these electronic systems reported improvements in the quality of the systems with respect to the previous systems. During the last few years, studies were directed towards the development and evaluation of "early warning systems" and "syndromic surveillance systems" for early detection and monitoring of epidemics and bioterrorisminitiated infectious disease outbreaks. The WHO envisages an integrated approach to communicable disease surveillance and this strategy has been recognised by all member states and is being adopted in the African region and activities are under way in the Eastern Mediterranean region, Europe and SouthEast Asia.
BMC infectious diseases, 2004
Surveillance data allow for analysis, providing public health officials and policy-makers with a basis for long-term priorities and timely information on possible outbreaks for rapid response (data for action). In this article we describe the considerations and technology behind a newly introduced public web tool in Sweden for easy retrieval of county and national surveillance data on communicable diseases. The web service was designed to automatically present updated surveillance statistics of some 50 statutory notifiable diseases notified to the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control (SMI). The surveillance data is based on clinical notifications from the physician having treated the patient and laboratory notifications, merged into cases using a unique personal identification number issued to all Swedish residents. The web service use notification data from 1997 onwards, stored in a relational database at the SMI. The web service presents surveillance data to the user i...
Disease Surveillance: a Public Health Informatics Approach, by Joseph Lombardo & David Buckeridge
Reciis, 2008
The collection embraces different essential topics for the implantation of an integrated and automated disease surveillance system on national level, dynamic and able to offer rapid responses within the scope of data management. The discussed concepts are clearly illustrated on the basis of some applications developed for specific problems, describing their modus operandi and the necessary steps for ensuring a good functioning of systems of this nature in the future.
Incorporating Tele-Health Into Disease Surveillance
Science Journal of Public Health, 2015
The increasing challenges in the field of public health is on the increase more than ever before and some of these challenges are not only natural but man-made threats; this calls for a concerted effort to have a perfect global surveillance system in place to ensure timeliness, accuracy, reliability, and completeness of disease tracking and reporting. It suffices to mention that the transformations recorded in the public health discipline vis-à-vis information telecommunication technology has tremendously improved disease surveillance with palpable results in the developed countries. Thus, the emergence of health informatics has significantly speed up detection of disease outbreaks, tracking of communicable and non-communicable diseases alike through the use of advanced software applications, increase investment in bioterrorism, syndromic surveillance and the use of automated surveillance systems to monitor both emerging and re-emerging diseases. However, considering the increasing global threat posed by bioterrorism, emerging and re-emerging diseases, there is need for the developing countries to also embrace the Tele-health system and to put in place a functional modern surveillance system.
American Journal of Infection Control, 2007
Background: Several computer biosurveillance systems are in place to detect events of public health (PH) significance; however, most lack access to timely and detailed patient-level data and investigation of alerts places a strain on PH resources. Methods: Hospital-based infection control professionals led a multi-disciplinary team to develop a computer rule-based system that relies on the patient's electronic medical record. The rules operated on HL7 messages transmitted by clinical computing systems and encompassed a variety of types of patient-level data, including laboratory test ordering and results, radiology ordering and reports, emergency room and outpatient clinic visits, and hospital admissions. Laboratory data were mapped to standard vocabularies, and radiology data were processed using natural language-processing algorithms before the rules were applied to filter for events of PH interest. For each rule, statistical process controls were applied to generate alerts when levels exceeded two standard deviations above the mean. The system was deployed at a large hospital in Salt Lake City during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, and it was accessed 3 times a day to perform surveillance. Daily reports were provided to local PH agencies after preliminary investigation of the alerts. Results: Of the 24 rules monitored, 9 generated alerts on 11 different occasions. The only significant event of PH interest that was noted during the surveillance period was an increase in influenza during the Games. The positive predictive value of the rules varied with a high value (89%) noted for identification of pneumonia from chest radiograph reports by natural language-processing algorithms. Conclusions: With the assistance of a novel computer-based surveillance system linked to the electronic medical record that uses objective, quantifiable events and access to patient data, infection control practitioners could play a front-line role in biosurveillance and facilitate bidirectional communication with PH agencies. (Am J Infect Control 2007;35:163-71.)