Infectious Disease Informatics: An Introduction and An Analysis Framework

Syndromic surveillance is concerned with continuous monitoring of public health-related information sources and early detection of adverse disease events. In practice, syndromic surveillance systems are being increasingly adopted to meet the critical needs of effective prevention, detection, and management of infectious disease outbreaks, either naturally-occurring or caused by bioterrorism attacks. From an academic standpoint, syndromic surveillance research is by nature multidisciplinary and has been attracting significant attention in recent years. This monograph presents a comprehensive review of the state of the art of syndromic surveillance research and system development efforts from the perspective of information science and technologies. On the basis of a detailed analysis of 50 local, state, national, and international syndromic surveillance systems and a review of about 200 academic publications, in this book we discuss the technical challenges, applicable approaches or solutions, and the current state of system implementation and adoption for key components of syndromic surveillance systems ranging from system architecture, data collection and sharing, data analysis, and data access and visualization. In addition, we present several case studies to compare several state-of-the-art syndromic surveillance systems. The purpose of these case studies is to illustrate the information technology-driven technical discussions in an integrated, real-world context. We also briefly touch upon critical nontechnical issues including data sharing policies, and system evaluation and adoption. This introductory chapter briefly discusses the importance of syndromic surveillance and what we believe to be/is a unique niche this book intends to fill.