Contact Information: Adam van Dijk - avandijk@kflapublichealth.ca

Components

Objective

Background

Next Steps

Most health units do not incorporate spatial information into disease surveillance there is a growing body of knowledge that indicates such data can be useful in tracking the spread of certain diseases.

The prompt detection of respiratory and gastrointestinal related illnesses are of particular importance due to the rapid transmission and potential burden on the community.

User Acceptance Publicly accessible website branded as Infection Watch Live (IWL)

which will publish local maps. The interface is a web-based GIS application developed using ESRI ArcGIS Server.

System uses anonymized, non-identifiable, real-time, emergency department respiratory and gastrointestinal visit data from an already existing real-time Emergency Department Syndromic Surveillance (EDSS) system in Kingston, Ontario.

Expected users include: medical officers of health, nurses, physicians, hospital administrators, long-term care homes, schools, child care, employers, EMS and local citizens.

Key functionalities: Today’s Maps – snapshot view of current activity (Fig. 1 & 2) Advanced Maps – simple GIS interface (Fig. 3) Illness Trends – animated historical activity WMS – ability to consume data in external applications Prevention and Info – enables the community

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Neil Watson, Marie Alexander, Paul Beach, Sevaan Franks, Dillan Fernando, Niall Wallace, Justin Chenier and Ryan Backus – all of whom provided considerable help and expertise in the development of this application.

Initial user feedback came from nurses, public health professionals, community members, parents, and infection control practitioners.

Infection Watch Live was given a 3.9 average rating by users (scale: 0 = not very useful – 5 = very useful)

Top three uses for IWL were: general community illness update, knowledge will guide me in the care of my family, knowledge will aid in infection prevention

Infection Watch Live – A real-time, geospatial mapping tool of hospital triage data for public consumptionAdam van Dijk MSc, Matt McPherson, Chris Sambol, Kieran M. Moore M.D.

To inform health professionals and the public directly about real-time utilization of local Emergency Departments for respiratory and gastrointestinal illness to enable enhanced communication and collaboration between Public Health and health care workers.

Q Dedicated to enhancing the health and safety of Canadians through public health informatics

Fig. 1 – Main landing page of Infection Watch Live showing real-time maps of illness activity.

Fig. 2 – Enlarged map of respiratory activity for children 0-4 years of age on Nov. 17th subdivided by forward sortation area (postal boundary).

Fig. 3 – Screen shot of the advanced maps section on Infection Watch Live which gives users more control over how they view local, illness activity maps.

Benefits

Enables informed decision making in the community.

Provides the community with current Emergency Department utilization data for respiratory and gastrointestinal illness.

Representing data by neighborhood enables the community to react to current respiratory and gastrointestinal infections in their area.

Expected public launch on January 1, 2009 Ongoing performance monitoring and user testing Continue engaging local stakeholders Possible future integration of additional data sources Expansion to other health units