In the event of a disease outbreak or bioterror event, it is vital that detection and management systems are in place. These systems offer health workers and decision makers the information necessary to mitigate the human and economic impact of a health event. STC offers an innovative approach to syndromic surveillance with real-world success.

STC and Dr. Xiaohui Zhang developed an approach to the public health status assessment of communities. The innovative methodology combines indicators collected from both traditional and nontraditional data sources. Using this approach, data streams are analyzed to identify early indications of health events. STC’s syndromic surveillance application uses data from emergency departments; emergency medical system runs; over-the-counter drug sales and prescription drug sales; and school and work absenteeism to provide early warning for possible outbreaks and bioterrorist events. User defined alerts are generated based on changes in the public’s health status.

STC successfully deployed the syndromic surveillance application in the New Hampshire Department of Health at the end of 2002. Based on Dr. Zhang’s work, the method has been validated against emergency department visits and case data. The system has identified gastrointestinal outbreaks and flu-like illness events before the use of traditional data alone would have allowed.

Analysis and Alerting Using Proprietary and open source algorithms:

• CuSum
• 3rd Sigma
• The Zhang Methodology

Raw data may be viewed and exported via:

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• PDF (Adobe Acrobat)
• XLS (Microsoft Excel)
• CSV (Comma Separated)