Syndromic Surveillance (SS)

Syndromic surveillance uses individual and population health indicators that are available before confirmed diagnoses or laboratory confirmation to identify outbreaks or health events and monitor the health status of a community. By automating public health data collection through Meaningful Use, syndromic surveillance provides public health information in near real time, often sooner than a laboratory test can even be completed. By getting more information more quickly, local, state, and federal public health can detect and respond to more outbreaks and health events more quickly. In addition to the promise of rapid response, the syndromic surveillance data compiled through Meaningful Use provides data streams for longer term, ongoing analysis of chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes, injuries, and the use of healthcare services.

Inpatient and Ambulatory Care Data

The International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS) released “Draft Guidelines for Syndromic Surveillance Using Inpatient and Ambulatory Clinical Care EHR Data” in March 2012, followed by a 30 day open comment period.

View Draft Guidelines here http://www.syndromic.org/uploads/files/MU_DraftGuideline_FINAL_pdf(1).pdf

The draft guidelines were developed as part of an ISDS and CDC initiative to advance surveillance practice and further clarify Meaningful Use standards for public health syndromic surveillance. CDC’s Division of Notifiable Diseases and Healthcare Information awarded a 12-month contract to ISDS (September 2011 - September 2012) to develop business and infrastructure requirements for syndromic surveillance using clinical data from health information exchanges. This will include syndromic surveillance using hospital inpatient, and ambulatory care data from eligible professionals. In addition, health information interchange architecture will be assessed to support syndromic surveillance using clinical data.

Emergency Department and Urgent Care Data

The “PHIN Messaging Guide for Syndromic Surveillance: Emergency Department and Urgent Care Data Version 1.0” (HL7 Version 2.5.1 (Version 2.3.1 Compatible)) released on October 18, 2011 includes minimum syndromic surveillance data standards (core and optional). This is a milestone that will help realize the public health objective of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs (a.k.a., Meaningful Use Programs) authorized under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act as part of 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) legislation. The final guide translates the recommendations made by the International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS) and CDC. The ISDS recommendations were developed using a community consensus-driven process approach, and the final CDC guide addresses the comments received from the Health Information Technology Standards Committee as well as those received when the Guide was posted online for public comment on May 5, 2011. This effort was funded in FY 2010 by the BioSense Program as part of its redesign effort (or BioSense 2.0).

PHIN Messaging Guide for Syndromic Surveillance: Emergency Department and Urgent Care Data has been approved and released. FAQs have been documented to assist you.

For further Meaningful Use information refer to the ISDS Meaningful Use Website http://www.syndromic.org/projects/meaningful-use. For BioSense related information refer to the CDC BioSense website http://www.cdc.gov/biosense/.

Check out the Syndromic Surveillance Community of Practice on phConnect.