SCM: a practical tool to implement hospital-based syndromic surveillance.

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Epidemiology
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Syndromic surveillance is crucial for early infectious disease outbreak detection, particularly during mass gatherings.
• Electronic data collection on symptoms in hospitals presents a significant operational challenge for surveillance systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe and evaluate the implementation of a symptom-clicking-module (SCM) for enhanced hospital-based syndromic surveillance.
• To assess the utility of SCM during the 41st World Exposition in Shanghai, China.

Main Methods:

• The SCM, featuring 25 targeted symptoms, was integrated into sentinel hospitals' Hospital Information Systems (HIS).
• Clinicians used SCM to record patient symptoms, with data automatically collated and transmitted daily.
• Symptoms were classified into seven syndromes, and statistical algorithms detected temporal data aberrations.

Main Results:

• SCM was successfully deployed and operated for 184 days, recording 1,730,797 patient encounters.
• 6.1% of visits met criteria for targeted syndromes, with acute respiratory and gastrointestinal syndromes being most frequent.
• 191 aberration signals were triggered, but none were confirmed as outbreaks after investigation.

Conclusions:

• SCM proved to be a practical tool for symptom recording in hospital-based syndromic surveillance.
• The module facilitated enhanced surveillance in the absence of pre-existing electronic data collection tools within HIS.