Defining and applying a method for improving the sensitivity and specificity of an emergency department early event detection system.
The sensitivity and specificity of syndrome definitions used in early event detection (EED) systems affect the usefulness of the system for end-users. The ability to calculate these values aids system designers in the refinement of syndrome definitions to better meet public health needs. Utilizing a stratified sampling method and expert review to create a gold standard dataset for the calculation of sensitivity and specificity, we describe how varying syndrome structure impacts these statistical parameters and discuss the relevance of this to outbreak detection and investigation.
Scholer
Matthew J
MJ
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
Ghneim
George S
GS
Wu
Shiying
S
Westlake
Matt
M
Travers
Debbie A
DA
Waller
Anna E
AE
McCalla
Anne-Lyne
AL
Wetterhall
Scott F
SF
D019992:Databases as Topic; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D042241:Early Diagnosis; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D006801:Humans; D009657:North Carolina / Q000453:epidemiology; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods*; D040442:Public Health Informatics / Q000379:methods; D012140:Respiratory Tract Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity