DEVELOPMENT OF A WEB-AVAILABLE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM INTEGRATING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION - The Public Health Emergencies Support System at the Portuguese General Directorate for Health

André Oliveira, Pedro Cabral

2009

Abstract

The application of geographic information tools in Public Health management already includes many areas of study, one of which deals with the integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in epidemiological surveillance systems, with the objective of aiding Public Health officials in decision-making. Some of these systems are already operational in several countries, acting in various spatial and temporal scales, and with different levels of priority. The present article introduces the development of a Public Health spatial data management infrastructure within the Portuguese General Directorate of Health, baptized Public Health Emergencies Support System and essentially aimed at performing epidemiological surveillance tasks. This is a multiplatform environment that brings together relational databases, geographic information systems and web technology, making it possible to supply daily and weekly updated results to health officials through the Internet. Satisfactory results were obtained with the implementation of SSESP, since most of the planned infrastructure and functionalities are already operational. Some of the system’s present handicaps and evolutionary perspectives are also discussed.

References

  1. Beaglehole, R., Bonita, R. & Kjellström, T. (1993) Basic Epidemiology, World Health Organization.
  2. Bortman, M. (1999) Elaboracion de corredores o canales endémicos mediante planillas de cálculo. Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública, 5, 1-8.
  3. Boulos, M., Roudsari, A. & Carson, E. (2001) Health Geomatics: an enabling suite of technologies in health and healthcare. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 34, 195-219.
  4. Colin, P. (2005) Dictionary of Medical Terms London, A & C Black.
  5. Cromley, E. & Mclafferty, S. (2002) GIS and Public Health New York, The Guilford Press.
  6. Epa (2008) Thesaurus of Terms Used in Microbial Risk Assessment Environmental Protection Agency.
  7. Gosselin, P., Lebel, G., Rivest, S. & Douville.Fradet, M. (2005) The Integrated System for Public Health Monitoring of West Nile Virus (ISPHM-WNV): a real-time GIS for surveillance and decision-making. International Journal of Health Geographics, 4:21.
  8. Lawson, A. (2006) Statistical methods in spatial epidemiology, West Sussex, John Wiley & Sons.
  9. Li, H., Faruque, F., Williams, W. & Finley, R. (2006) Real-Time Syndromic Surveillance. ArcUser Magazine, 9 (1):17-19.
  10. Nielsen, J. & Loranger, H. (2006) Prioritizing Web Usability, Berkeley, New Riders.
  11. Reinhardt, M., Elias, J., Albert, J., Frosch, M., Harmsen, D. & Vogel, U. (2008) EpiScanGIS: an online geographic surveillance system for meningococcal disease. International Journal of Health Geographics, 7:33.
  12. Santana, P. (2005) Geografias da saúde e do desenvolvimento, evolução e tendências em Portugal Coimbra, Edições Almedina.
  13. 1 Incidence corresponds to the number of episodes of a specific disease happening in a population in a specific time period (Beaglehole et al. 1993).
  14. 2 Atypical concentrations of public health events in time and space (Cromley and McLafferty, 2002).
  15. 3 An Epidemic is the occurrence of an abnormally high number of cases in a specific area or population, considering the area or the time frame (Beaglehole et al. 1993).
  16. 4 Insect or other animal carrying a disease susceptible of being transmitted to human beings (Colin, 2005).
  17. 5 An epidemic that occurs globally, or over a very wide area, spreading through international borders, generally affecting a large number of persons (EPA, 2008).
  18. 6 The sudden occurrence of several episodes of a specific disease (Colin, 2005).
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Oliveira A. and Cabral P. (2009). DEVELOPMENT OF A WEB-AVAILABLE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM INTEGRATING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION - The Public Health Emergencies Support System at the Portuguese General Directorate for Health . In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST, ISBN 978-989-8111-81-4, pages 238-243. DOI: 10.5220/0001822502380243


in Bibtex Style

@conference{webist09,
author={André Oliveira and Pedro Cabral},
title={DEVELOPMENT OF A WEB-AVAILABLE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM INTEGRATING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION - The Public Health Emergencies Support System at the Portuguese General Directorate for Health},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,},
year={2009},
pages={238-243},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0001822502380243},
isbn={978-989-8111-81-4},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,
TI - DEVELOPMENT OF A WEB-AVAILABLE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM INTEGRATING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION - The Public Health Emergencies Support System at the Portuguese General Directorate for Health
SN - 978-989-8111-81-4
AU - Oliveira A.
AU - Cabral P.
PY - 2009
SP - 238
EP - 243
DO - 10.5220/0001822502380243