Electronic medical records (EMRs) might be the key to better detection of gastrointestinal disease (GI) outbreaks, according to a study published in the current issue of Foodborne Pathogens and Disease.
Researchers who wondered if passive reporting and laboratory testing delays were holding back efforts to detect GI disease outbreaks used data from EMRs to see if detection could be improved.
They used 2009 zip code-specific daily episode counts from Kaiser Permanente Northern California EMRs, covering 3.3 million members and were able to detect 28 potential outbreaks using single stream analyses. They were able to discover additional outbreaks using multi-stream analyses and in one example, improved the timeliness of detection.
The research team, Sharon K. Greene, Jie Huang, Allyson M. Abrams, Debra Gilliss, Mary Reed, Richard Platt, Susan S. Huang, and Martin Kulldorff, concluded that tracking outbreaks with EMRs could be a good way for health departments to supplement their traditional methods of tracking outbreaks.
I read they are doing the same thing in Massachusetts for tracking hepatitis infections. Hopefully it will eventually be applied to a national scale to aid in disease prevention!