Surveillance Flashcards
What is epidemiological surveillance?
Ongoing systematic collection, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of data regarding a health event for use in public health activation to reduce morbidity and mortality and to improve health
What is surveillance used for?
Characterising patterns of disease, detecting epidemics (e.g. covid), further investigation, research, disease control programmes, setting priorities and evaluation
Data collection -> analysis -> interpretation -> dissemination -> action
What are the two types of surveillance?
Indicator based: specific selected indications under surveillance (infectious diseases, cancer, report on rates of disease by demographic characterises of affected individuals)
Event based: organised monitoring of reports, media, rumours and other information about health events that could be a serious risk to public health
What are the three types of indicator based surveillance?
Passive surveillance
Active surveillance
Sentinel survellience
What is passive surveillance?
Routine reporting of health data, using notifiable diseases (notifying to public health if disease is present in community, e.g. HEP-C), disease registries (e.g. cancer, chronic diseases) and hospital data
Useful source of health information as provides baseline data, monitors trends and monitors impact
Strength: low cost, data linkage and wide area
Limitation: under-reporting
What is active surveillance?
Serosurveillance: the monitoring of the presence or absence of specific substances in the blood serum of a population
Health survey: example: active case finding of TB in Indonesia
What is sentinel surveillance?
Usually done in selected institutions or groups
Useful for monitoring diseases or trends and detecting outbreaks
What are characteristics of a good surveillance system?
Clear case definition (strong predictive value), organised, workable/practical, uniform, continuous, timely, sensitive, acceptable
