This project will develop and evaluate a collection of public health technology tools to assist in? remote data collection and dispersion. Mass prophylaxis clinic needs will be addressed to capture data? electronically and monitor both individual and collections of clinics. Language translation features will be? implemented to support real-time text-to-text or text-to-speech translation in the field, enabling clinic staff to? communicate with speakers of other languages. Event reporting tools will allow health data from injured or? sick individuals to be collected and uploaded to a surveillance system during large public events.? Techniques using lightweight, low-investment, multi-use technologies will be readily adaptable to other? population-based public health situations such as vaccine days and mass treatment and casualty? situations.? Using clustering, decision tree induction and other data-mining techniques we will develop? automated, data-driven methods of defining syndrome groupings for syndromic surveillance systems. In? addition we will compare the sensitivity and specificity of these data-generated syndromes with currently? used expert-opinion based syndromes using the CDC's ICD-9-based syndrome definitions as the gold? standard.? We will extend available PHIN ontologies and vocabulary concepts to enable standardized? interchange of aggregated and raw data, expert-user input text, and results of statistical tests within and? between syndromic surveillance systems. The techniques developed will support the development of interjurisdictional? detection algorithms in Project 2, and will provide standards for inter-jurisdictional transfer of? information and aggregated data when sharing of raw data is legally or politically is not possible.? The ability to collect, summarize and share data between diverse information systems is key to the? creation of local and national public health informatics networks (PHIN). Although work will be centered on? syndromic surveillance the techniques developed will be applicable to other areas of public health.
