Syndromic surveillance based on emergency department activity and crude mortality: two examples

Area of Science:

• Public Health Surveillance
• Epidemiology
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Public health crises necessitate rapid information for effective decision-making.
• Routine data from existing providers can offer timely insights.
• The Institut national de veille sanitaire (InVS) initiated a pilot network for real-time data collection.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate a pilot network integrating real-time data from hospital emergency departments and national statistics.
• To assess the utility of this integrated data for monitoring influenza outbreaks and environmental health events.
• To determine the correlation and lag times between health events and mortality.

Main Methods:

• Collected real-time data from computerized medical files in emergency departments.
• Received daily mortality data from the national institute of statistics (Insee).
• Compared influenza data with a sentinel network (Sentiweb) and environmental health data with meteorological temperatures.
• Conducted weekly mortality analysis.

Main Results:

• Significant correlation (p<0.001) found between emergency department influenza data and sentinel network data for 2004/05 and 2005/06 outbreaks.
• Both data sources identified outbreak start times similarly.
• Significant correlation observed between certain diagnoses and temperature increases during heat events.
• Mortality showed a significant increase with a one-to-two-week lag for both influenza and heat-related events.

Conclusions:

• This study represents the first known use of real-time morbidity and mortality data integration.
• Simultaneous analysis of complementary data sources enables rapid assessment of public health phenomena impacts.
• The pilot network demonstrates a valuable approach for enhanced public health surveillance and timely intervention.