[Preliminary application on China Infectious Diseases Automated-alert and Response System (CIDARS), between 2008 and...

To analyze the results of application on China Infectious Diseases Automated-alert and Response System (CIDARS) and for further improving the system.

Amount of signal, proportion of signal responded, time to signal response, manner of signal verification and the outcome of each signal in CIDARS were descriptively analyzed from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2010.

A total of 533 829 signals were generated nationwide on 28 kinds of infectious diseases in the system. 97.13% of the signals had been responded and the median time to response was 1.1 hours. Among them, 2472 signals were generated by the fixed-value detection method which involved 9 kinds of diseases after the preliminary verification, field investigation and laboratory tests. 2202 signals were excluded, and finally 246 cholera cases, 15 plague cases and 9 H5N1 cases as well as 39 outbreaks of cholera were confirmed. 531 357 signals were generated by the other method - the 'moving percentile method' which involved 19 kinds of diseases. The average amount of signal per county per week was 1.65, with 6603 signals (1.24%) preliminarily verified as suspected outbreaks and 1594 outbreaks were finally confirmed by further field investigation. For diseases in CIDARS, the proportion of signals related to suspected outbreaks to all triggered signals showed a positive correlation with the proportion of cases related to outbreaks of all the reported cases (r = 0.963, P < 0.01).

The signals of CIDARS were responded timely, and the signal could act as a clue for potential outbreaks, which helped enhancing the ability on outbreaks detection for local public health departments.