Outpatient physician billing data for age and setting specific syndromic surveillance of influenza-like illnesses

Authors:
Emily H. Chan;Robyn Tamblyn;Katia M. L. Charland;David L. Buckeridge
Affiliations:
McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada;McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada;McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada and Children's Hospital Boston, Boston, MA, USA;McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Venue:
Journal of Biomedical Informatics
Year:
2011

Citing 2
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Abstract

Syndromic surveillance is a novel automated approach to monitoring influenza activity, but there is no consensus regarding the most informative data sources for use within such a system. By comparing physician billing data from Quebec, Canada and hospital admission records, we assessed the timeliness of medical visits for influenza-like illnesses (ILI) to two types of outpatient healthcare settings. Overall, ILI visits by children aged 5-17years at community-based settings were the most strongly correlated with hospital admissions and gave the greatest lead over hospital admissions. However, a degree of year-to-year variation suggests that syndromic surveillance of influenza should not focus on just a single subgroup. These findings reveal the richness of these real-time data for epidemic monitoring and demonstrate the flexibility of syndromic surveillance. By using real-time data, an evolving epidemic can be rapidly characterized by its epidemiological patterns, which is not possible with traditional surveillance systems.