title: Defining and applying a method for improving the sensitivity and specificity of an emergency department early event detection system.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Scholer
authors.forename: George S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Ghneim
authors.forename: Shiying
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Matt
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Westlake
authors.forename: Debbie A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Travers
authors.forename: Anna E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Waller
authors.forename: Anne-Lyne
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: McCalla
authors.forename: Scott F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Wetterhall
mesh_terms: 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