title: Cross-Disciplinary Consultancy to Bridge Public Health Technical Needs and Analytic Developers: Asyndromic Surveillance Use Case.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  We document a funded effort to bridge the gap between constrained scientific challenges of public health surveillance and methodologies from academia and industry. Component tasks are the collection of epidemiologists' use case problems, multidisciplinary consultancies to refine them, and dissemination of problem requirements and shareable datasets. We describe an initial use case and consultancy as a concrete example and challenge to developers.
  
  
  METHODS
  Supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Biosurveillance Ecosystem project, the International Society for Disease Surveillance formed an advisory group to select tractable use case problems and convene inter-disciplinary consultancies to translate analytic needs into well-defined problems and to promote development of applicable solution methods. The initial consultancy's focus was a problem originated by the North Carolina Department of Health and its NC DETECT surveillance system: Derive a method for detection of patient record clusters worthy of follow-up based on free-text chief complaints and without syndromic classification.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Direct communication between public health problem owners and analytic developers was informative to both groups and constructive for the solution development process. The consultancy achieved refinement of the asyndromic detection challenge and of solution requirements. Participants summarized and evaluated solution approaches and discussed dissemination and collaboration strategies.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A solution meeting the specification of the use case described above could improve human monitoring efficiency with expedited warning of events requiring follow-up, including otherwise overlooked events with no syndromic indicators. This approach can remove obstacles to collaboration with efficient, minimal data-sharing and without costly overhead.
authors.affiliation: North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
authors.forename: Zachary
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Faigen
authors.affiliation: North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
authors.forename: Lana
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Deyneka
authors.affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Emergency Medicine.
authors.forename: Amy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ising
authors.affiliation: Carnegie Mellon University, Event and Pattern Detection Laboratory.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Neill
authors.affiliation: University of Utah, Department of Biomedical Informatics.
authors.forename: Mike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Conway
authors.affiliation: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Department of Analytics, Intelligence, and Technology.
authors.forename: Geoffrey
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Fairchild
authors.affiliation: Boston Public Health Commission, Department of Communicable Disease Control.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gunn
authors.affiliation: New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Public Health Services.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Swenson
authors.affiliation: University of Washington School of Public Health, Department of Health Services.
authors.forename: Ian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Painter
authors.affiliation: International Society for Disease Surveillance.
authors.forename: Lauren
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.affiliation: Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Chemical & Biological Defense Program.
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kiley
authors.affiliation: International Society for Disease Surveillance.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Streichert
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
authors.forename: Howard
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Burkom
keywords: asyndromic; case cluster; chief complaint; disease surveillance
references.citation: J Public Health Manag Pract. 2009 Sep-Oct;15(5):432-8
references.pmid: 19704312
references.citation: J Urban Health. 2003 Jun;80(2 Suppl 1):i89-96
references.pmid: 12791783
references.citation: Emerg Infect Dis. 2015 Feb;21(2):265-72
references.pmid: 25625936
references.citation: MMWR Recomm Rep. 2004 May 7;53(RR-5):1-11
references.pmid: 15129191
references.citation: Stat Med. 2013 Mar 30;32(7):1206-22
references.pmid: 22941770
references.citation: MMWR Recomm Rep. 2001 Jul 27;50(RR-13):1-35; quiz CE1-7
references.pmid: 18634202
references.citation: BMC Public Health. 2008 Apr 30;8:146
references.pmid: 18447944