Developing syndrome definitions based on consensus and current use.

Area of Science:

• Public Health Surveillance
• Computational Epidemiology
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Syndromic surveillance systems lack standardized definitions, hindering data integration and comparative analysis.
• Existing systems utilize varied definitions for common syndromes, impacting accuracy and interoperability.
• The development of reference syndrome definitions is crucial for advancing public health surveillance.

Framework:

• A consensus-based approach was employed to establish standardized syndrome definitions.
• Investigators from 10 US-based syndromic surveillance systems participated in a collaborative workshop.
• Key syndromes identified for standardization include Respiratory, Gastrointestinal, Constitutional, and Influenza-Like Illness (ILI).

Implementation:

• Consensus definitions were developed for four prevalent syndromes.
• Sensitive and specific definitions were prioritized for respiratory and gastrointestinal syndromes.
• Definitions were refined with keywords, regular expressions, mapped to standard vocabularies, and formalized in an OWL ontology.

Implications:

• The consensus definitions represent the current state-of-the-art for automated surveillance syndromes.
• These definitions require validation through real-world data implementation to refine their accuracy.
• The methodology for creating consensus definitions can be adapted to other domains with diverse terminologies.