Question

1. Hundreds of hospitals, clinics, and health departments automatically report certain symptoms and diagnoses to the government each day. This practice of biosurveillance helps officials track the spread of flu, detect outbreaks, and watch for unusual symptoms that might signal a brand new disease or bioterrorism. Although information is reported each day, doctors rarely know what their colleagues nearby are diagnosing. Instead they often call the health information department to ask if anyone has heard of any outbreak of certain cases. However, work is being done to create a mechanism to track diseases before they become outbreaks. The supervisor of data services at Reid Hospital is responsible for all registries and databases that are maintained in the facility. The medical director requests that the supervisor of data services investigate developing a registry or database to track cases of potential bioterrorism, communicable disease outbreaks, and other unusual diseases or symptoms. a. What resources are available to the data services supervisor to help define the conditions that should be included in a biosurveillance registry? b. How can existing registries be useful in determining data elements that should be included in a biosurveillance registry? c. Websites such as the Harvard Medical School Children's Hospital Boston HealthMap, offer free web services that track the number of cases of influenza and other conditions in an area. How might those services be useful in developing a biosurveillance registry?

Answer 1

Answer:- The National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) which is an element of Public Health Information Network (PHIN) is being developed by The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). The elements of National Health Care Survey National Health Care Survey can also be used quite usefully in estimating the various patterns and trends in national healthcare data and at the same time for monitoring care-giving in most of the setups, for example, inpatient, emergency, outpatient, and so on.

Answer:-  The different types of guidance can be provided by the prevailing registers on data definition, process and procedures set for defining the different cases, developing various strategies for follow up and tracking of the patients if these are considered as the price objective of biosurveillance registry

Answer:- As the main focus of these web services remains on the communicable diseases including the events and occurrence of certain diseases and situations, thus these web services can be utilized as a resource of data content along with the data collection, tracking and maintenance. In case of a facility based registry, it is quite important to match with the population-based registries in terms of data content, data definition, data maintenance in order to facilitate easy comparison of facility registry with the data in the population-based system