Basic Disease Investigation Module Two: Basics of Public Health Surveillance

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Syndromic Surveillance

Syndromic surveillance is defined as the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and application of real-time disease indicators which can be used to detect a disease outbreak before public health authorities would otherwise identify it. Syndromic surveillance data is based on indicators, or syndromes, NOT actual cases of disease. For example:

Investigators will not have a specific patient diagnosis, but if a cluster of   syndromes occur, the health department will be alerted to investigate. The investigation will determine if there is an outbreak of a specific disease causing the observed syndromes, or if these syndromes, are unrelated. The goal of syndromic surveillance is to detect a health event earlier than if relying solely on a laboratory confirmed diagnosis. For example, syndromic surveillance was set up after Sept 11, 2001 in New York City hospitals.   Epidemiologists were stationed at all major hospitals to review emergency department records and tabulate the number of patients coming in each shift with syndromes of interest.   Recent efforts have been made to automate this process. Syndromic surveillance has also been used for large events such as the Olympics and the World Series.   Future projects in Colorado may include participation with the CDC BioSense program for surveillance via chief complaint data from specific hospitals in the Denver metro area.