Computers Linked for Epidemiologic Surveillance

A new electronic biosurveillance system is designed to help health officials spot an outbreak of an infectious disease soon after infected people show up in emergency rooms.

Developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, Atlanta, GA, USA), the system is called BioSense. It is a part of the Public Health Information Network (PHIN), a U.S. national initiative to implement multi-organizational business and technical architecture for public health information systems. By the end of 2006, BioSense is expected to link 250 hospitals in more than 30 cities to servers at the CDC's Atlanta headquarters. CDC officials will be able look at disease patterns in several major metropolitan areas at once. State and local health officials will be able to tap into the system to review data collected on symptoms and diagnoses of illnesses in their area.

"In the event of a bioterrorism attack or an outbreak of avian flu in the U.S., we would have broad, rich data that would show us how big it is, where it's spreading, and how fast, said Blake Caldwell, a senior adviser to the CDC who is leading the development of BioSense.

For decades, U.S. doctors mailed handwritten reports that were used by federal officials to track diseases. Paper surveillance systems were becoming inefficient, but the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States and the rapid spread of avian flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have made them obsolete. Today, at least 100 local or state disease-surveillance programs are active in the country, crunching data daily on everything from pharmacy sales of diarrhea medication to the incidence of flu and other common illnesses, according to the CDC.




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Centers for Disease Control