title: Syndromic surveillance using minimum transfer of identifiable data: the example of the National Bioterrorism Syndromic Surveillance Demonstration Program.
abstract: Several health plans and other organizations are collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop a syndromic surveillance system with national coverage that includes more than 20 million people. A principal design feature of this system is reliance on daily reporting of counts of individuals with syndromes of interest in specified geographic regions rather than reporting of individual encounter-level information. On request from public health agencies, health plans and telephone triage services provide additional information regarding individuals who are part of apparent clusters of illness. This reporting framework has several advantages, including less sharing of protected health information, less risk that confidential information will be distributed inappropriately, the prospect of better public acceptance, greater acceptance by health plans, and less effort and cost for both health plans and public health agencies. If successful, this system will allow any organization with appropriate data to contribute vital information to public health syndromic surveillance systems while preserving individuals' privacy to the greatest extent possible.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA. richard.platt@channing.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Platt
authors.forename: Carmella
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bocchino
authors.forename: Blake
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Caldwell
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Harmon
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kleinman
authors.forename: Ross
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lazarus
authors.forename: Andrew F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Nelson
authors.forename: James D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Nordin
authors.forename: Debra P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Ritzwoller
mesh_terms: D023482:Bioterrorism; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003625:Data Collection; D018563:Disease Notification / Q000379:methods; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D006801:Humans; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods*; D040442:Public Health Informatics; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D014505:Urban Population