Outpatient physician billing data for age and setting specific syndromic surveillance of influenza-like illnesses.
Syndromic surveillance is a novel automated approach to monitoring influenza activity, but there is no consensus regarding the most informative data sources for use within such a system. By comparing physician billing data from Quebec, Canada and hospital admission records, we assessed the timeliness of medical visits for influenza-like illnesses (ILI) to two types of outpatient healthcare settings. Overall, ILI visits by children aged 5-17 years at community-based settings were the most strongly correlated with hospital admissions and gave the greatest lead over hospital admissions. However, a degree of year-to-year variation suggests that syndromic surveillance of influenza should not focus on just a single subgroup. These findings reveal the richness of these real-time data for epidemic monitoring and demonstrate the flexibility of syndromic surveillance. By using real-time data, an evolving epidemic can be rapidly characterized by its epidemiological patterns, which is not possible with traditional surveillance systems.
McGill University, 1140 Pine Avenue West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Emily H
EH
Chan
Robyn
R
Tamblyn
Katia M L
KM
Charland
David L
DL
Buckeridge
D016208:Databases, Factual; D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000517:prevention & control*; D018588:Fee-for-Service Plans; D006801:Humans; D007251:Influenza, Human / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control; D010045:Outpatients; D010820:Physicians; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods*; D011792:Quebec / Q000453:epidemiology