In the last decade, public health specialists have become increasingly concerned with the possibility of? outbreaks resulting from bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases. With the intent of enabling rapid? detection of incipient epidemics, many groups have implemented surveillance systems that operate on a? variety of """"""""prediagnostic"""""""" data sources and that employ different kinds of outbreak detection algorithms.? Unfortunately, evaluation of these systems, including their data sources and detection algorithms, has not? accompanied the flurry of implementation activity. A major reason for the lack of evaluation is the difficulty? encountered in configuring surveillance systems to analyze novel data sources and to employ novel? detection algorithms without the need for endless reprogramming. We will develop an ontology-driven? computational test bed that will enable the critical and easy evaluation of these surveillance data sources? and analytic methods. To meet this goal, we propose the following four specific aims: (1) Develop a? classification of analytic methods and surveillance data used in outbreak detection. (2) Build a software? control structure for executing evaluation studies of outbreak detection methods. (3) Encode software? methods for outbreak detection and evaluation. (4) Conduct specific evaluation studies with data from? Boston and Montreal healthcare organizations using the test bed. The underlying methodologies that we will? develop for integrating surveillance data streams and for allowing experimentation with analytic methods will? enable the development of a new generation of surveillance systems that will take full advantage of the? expanding public health information infrastructure. The computational architecture that we propose will serve? as a model for the next generation of such systems.?
| Buckeridge, David L; Okhmatovskaia, Anna; Tu, Samson et al. (2008) Understanding detection performance in public health surveillance: modeling aberrancy-detection algorithms. J Am Med Inform Assoc 15:760-9 |
