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Surveillance

Syndromic Surveillance Since September 11, 2001, federal, state, and private initiatives have been aggressively pursuing and using federal bio-terror funding to develop the capability to identify and manage “bio” events. Experts feel patients with “conditions” associated with these potential events will first present to an ED. Therefore, much interest exists in developing systems that accumulate, aggregate and analyze ED data. Such systems could then be used to place patients into defined syndromic groups (categories of disease), report volume, and analyze this volume against targets and thresholds. It did not take long for EMA to realize it had already built a comprehensive business intelligence system, which could be adapted for bio/syndromic surveillance. As a result, EMA has been working on projects with the NJ and NY state departments of health, NYC Department of Health, the CDC, and the Department of Defense’s Essence Project. While working with these agencies, EMA’s intelligence system, WEBEMARS (Emergency Medicine Analysis and Reporting System), has been modified to allow for analysis of ED encounter data and placement of patients into syndromic groups based on ICD9 logic developed by the CDC and Essence, and patient complaint logic developed initially by the New York City DOH and modified by the New York State DOH. As a result, WEBEMARS can now produce reports on almost real time patient visits by each syndromic group for each day using the patient’s presenting complaint. It is reports like these that very few participants in the bio-surveillance arena, both public and private, are capable of producing and decimating. For any questions or comments regarding syndromic surveillance, please contact Jonathan Rothman, EMA’s Director of Data Management at 973 251-1120 or email at rothmanj@alpha-apr.com.