Today, public health officials are actively monitoring the health of populations for outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as influenza and gastrointestinal illness, as well as emerging diseases such as MERS and Ebola.
To do the job, they must rely upon data that is accessible through surveillance tools. Johns Hopkins University’s (JHU) Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) www.jhu.apl.edu a not-for-profit division of JHU, has developed technologies for electronic disease surveillance to help improve the timeliness of access to this type of data and the corresponding analysis.
Over the last 15 years, the lab’s work in global health and disease surveillance has grown to encompass all phases of the surveillance timeline from the time that a potential disease outbreak is predicted to the time when the community has been made aware of the outbreak.
“The Laboratory has developed advanced electronic disease surveillance technologies that have helped our public health partners monitor established patterns of disease progression, said Sheri Lewis, Global Health Surveillance Program Manager in APL’s Homeland Protection Mission Area.
The APL Global Health Surveillance focuses on all phases of the surveillance timeline from predicting a potential disease outbreak through response and communication efforts. The “Suite for Automated Global Electronic bioSurveillance” or referred to as SAGES www.jhu.apl.edu/pages/resources/SAGES-Information-Sheet.pdf is a collection of modular, flexible freely available software tools for electronic disease surveillance in resource-limited settings.
Rapid data acquisition is the most challenging aspect of establishing a successful electronic disease surveillance system. The SAGES system can collect data from multiple sources such as paper-based patient records and clinic logbooks. The process of turning the paper-based records into electronic data depends on the available technology infrastructure.
If internet access is available, than a laptop, desktop or other web accessible device can connect to the OpenESSENCE, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4050757, a web application to enter data directly into the OpenESSENCE database. OpenESSENCE is a freely available web-based multi-user, able to do data entry analysis, and operates as a visualization tool to accomplish electronic disease surveillance.
If cellular coverage is available, then Android smartphones or simple cell phones can be used to manually enter the information into SMS text messages. The SMS messages are received at a central point on an android smartphone connected to a computer hosting the OpenESSENCE database. The data is then ready to be analyzed using the analysis and visualization capabilities of the OpenESSENCE web application.
Looking forward, the Global Health Surveillance team will explore predictive analytics and the use of algorithms to forecast future events in real-time. According to Lewis, “If we know a disease is endemic in an area, we will be able to predict when it will flare up and when it is likely to become an outbreak.”