Symptom based surveillance

The current disease surveillance system in Norway is based on reporting from laboratories and primary care physicians. This kind of disease surveillance systems has two major disadvantages.

Background

The current disease surveillance system in Norway is based on reporting from laboratories and primary care physicians. This kind of disease surveillance systems has two major disadvantages. First, it may take a long time to establish a conclusion based on the laboratory sample. Second, we may not test for the correct disease. We hope that symptom based (also known as syndromic) disease surveillance may compensate for these disadvantages.

Goals

• Deploy an open source and free disease surveillance and disease reporting system.
• Develop methods and models for computing the risk for and early detection of disease outbreaks.

Problems

• Computing, distributing and managing spatial-temporal models of how contagious diseases spread
• Computing a disease risk for contagious diseases based on spatial-temporal models
• Integrating data about disease occurrences and disease risks into the diagnosis process of primary care physicians.

Methods

• Medical: Controlled trial where some geographical areas are used as intervention areas while others are used for control.
• Computer science: Modeling & engineering

Project manager

Dr.Johan Gustav Bellika, NST/UiT

Project members from the partners

Norwegian Health Net, UiT (Toralf Hasvold, Gunnar Hartvigsen, Johan Gustav Bellika)

Researchers

Johan Gustav Bellika (UiT/NST), Vedad Hadziavdic (NST), Monika Alise Johansen (NST), Gunnar Hartvigsen (UiT), Toralf Hasvold (UiT), Per Atle Bakkevoll (NST), Harald Øverli Eriksen (NST), Elin Breivik (NST), Ellen Rygh (NST)

Project start/stop

Start 01/01 2007 stop 31/12 2009

Contribution to health care

If access to information about cases of contagious diseases is useful for primary care physicians, and use of such information leads to a reduction in number of persons infected, then the project will give an important contribution to the population’s health. The project will make it more efficient to report cases of contagious diseases to the Norwegian Institute for public health (NIPH), and may enable NIPH or local health authorities to discover disease outbreaks earlier.

Contribution to new industry

The project may enable electronic health record providers, or others, to deliver online information about the current situation with regard to contagious diseases. This possibility will increase their products value as a tool for making clinical decisions. If the project succeeds it may create possibilities for new services and products.

Contact info

e-mail: Johan Gustav Bellika, mobile phone: +47 957 48 049

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