tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
Emerg Infect Dis. 2012 May;18(5):885-7. doi: 10.3201/eid1805.111796.
Electronic school absenteeism monitoring and influenza surveillance, Hong Kong.
Cheng CK, Cowling BJ, Lau EH, Ho LM, Leung GM, Ip DK.
Abstract
TO THE EDITOR: Potentially useful public health interventions, such as school closure, need to be introduced in a timely manner during the evolution of an ongoing epidemic to substantially affect community transmission (1,2). In most traditional surveillance systems that include health care use data, however, considerable delays occur between data collection and feedback, which leads to suboptimal and untimely information for guiding evidence-based public health decisions. Newer syndromic surveillance approaches have been attempted to improve timeliness by targeting earlier events in the health-seeking pathway and by promoting real-time collection and processing of surveillance data by using modern information technology (3,4). Building on an existing platform of an electronic school management system, we developed an automated school absenteeism surveillance system for influenza-like illness (ILI) in Hong Kong and evaluated its performance using data collected from March 2008 through June 2011. The Institutional Review Board of the University of Hong Kong/Hospital Authority, Hong Kong West Cluster, approved the study.
PMID:
22516519
[PubMed - in process]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22516519
Electronic school absenteeism monitoring and influenza surveillance, Hong Kong.
Cheng CK, Cowling BJ, Lau EH, Ho LM, Leung GM, Ip DK.
Abstract
TO THE EDITOR: Potentially useful public health interventions, such as school closure, need to be introduced in a timely manner during the evolution of an ongoing epidemic to substantially affect community transmission (1,2). In most traditional surveillance systems that include health care use data, however, considerable delays occur between data collection and feedback, which leads to suboptimal and untimely information for guiding evidence-based public health decisions. Newer syndromic surveillance approaches have been attempted to improve timeliness by targeting earlier events in the health-seeking pathway and by promoting real-time collection and processing of surveillance data by using modern information technology (3,4). Building on an existing platform of an electronic school management system, we developed an automated school absenteeism surveillance system for influenza-like illness (ILI) in Hong Kong and evaluated its performance using data collected from March 2008 through June 2011. The Institutional Review Board of the University of Hong Kong/Hospital Authority, Hong Kong West Cluster, approved the study.
PMID:
22516519
[PubMed - in process]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22516519