This conference is designed to provide researchers, informaticists, and public health practitioners with the latest developments in the design, implementation, use, and evaluation of syndromic surveillance systems. The information on the state of the art and future trends will allow conference participants to make informed and practical choices regarding research directions and the practical use of syndromic surveillance systems in public health settings.
The activity will explore:
- Ways to enhance the synergy between research, informatics, and practice in public health.
- How clinical information systems can support public health surveillance efforts.
- Advances in methods for classifying surveillance records and modeling surveillance data streams.
- Important and novel advances in the field of surveillance methodologies and analytical approaches, including developments in temporal and spatial statistical methods for outbreak detection, outbreak simulation, and evaluation of algorithms and systems.
- Experiences by public health agencies in implementing, running, and evaluating syndromic systems.
- Surveillance in international settings, including international collaborations in research and practice.
- Informatics architectures, integration, interoperability, applications and practice.
- The use of syndromic surveillance in post-disaster surveillance and in low-resource settings.
- The role of syndromic surveillance in planning, detecting, and responding to pandemic influenza.
- Applying methodologies to broader domains beyond traditional infectious disease surveillance, including environmental health and chronic disease surveillance.
- Interaction now and in the future between syndromic surveillance efforts at the local, regional, and national levels.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this conference participants will be able to:
- Describe strategies that can be used to implement or improve current syndromic surveillance systems.
- Explain the relationships between federal, regional and local initiatives in syndromic surveillance.
- Identify applications of syndromic surveillance for which there is evidence of effectiveness.
- Identify the challenges faced in developing syndromic surveillance systems and how to overcome obstacles.
- Identify ways to improve collaboration between research, informatics, and practice in public health.