Infectious Disease Informatics: Syndromic Surveillance for Public Health and Bio-Defense

by Hsinchun Chen, Daniel Zeng, Ping Yan

Overview

Computer-based infectious disease surveillance systems are capable of real-time or near real-time detection of serious illnesses and potential bioterrorism agent exposures and represent a major step forward in disease surveillance. Infectious Disease Informatics: Syndromic Surveillance for Public Health and Bio-Defense is an in-depth monograph that analyzes and evaluates the outbreak modeling and detection capabilities of existing surveillance systems under a unified framework, and presents the first book-length coverage of the subject from an informatics-driven perspective.

Individual chapters consider the state of the art, including the facilitation of data collection, sharing and transmission; a focus on various outbreak detection methods; data visualization and information dissemination issues; and system assessment and other policy issues. Eight chapters then report on several real-world case studies, summarizing and comparing eight syndromic surveillance systems, including those that have been adopted by many public health agencies (e.g., RODS and BioSense). The book concludes with a discussion of critical issues and challenges, with a look to future directions.

This book is an excellent source of current information for researchers in public health and IT. Government public health officials and private-sector practitioners in both public health and IT will find the most up-to-date information available, and students from a variety of disciplines, including public health, biostatistics, information systems, computer science, and public administration and policy will get a comprehensive look at the concepts, techniques, and practices of syndromic surveillance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441912770
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	12/17/2009
Series:	Integrated Series in Information Systems , #21
Edition description:	2010
Pages:	210
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

SYNDROMIC SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS.- Infectious Disease Informatics: An Introduction and An Analysis Framework.- Public Health Syndromic Surveillance Systems.- Syndromic Surveillance Data Sources and Collection Strategies.- Data Analysis and Outbreak Detection.- Data Visualization, Information Dissemination, and Alerting.- System Assessment and Evaluation.- SYNDROMIC SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM CASE STUDIES.- BioSense.- RODS.- BioPortal.- ESSENCE.- New York City Syndromic Surveillance Systems.- EARS.- Argus.- HealthMap.- Challenges and Future Directions.

Editorial Reviews

From the reviews:

“This book summarizes and describes the state-of-art research on the development and implementation of health surveillance systems that use early indicators of disease to identify outbreaks. … The book was written for upper-level undergraduates and graduates in health sciences, computer science, and public administration, researchers in public health and IT, and government public health officials. … This is the best book that presents a comprehensive coverage of syndromic surveillance systems.” (Edward K. Mensah, Doody’s Review Service, August, 2010)

From the Publisher