Question

Question: How can data collection for diseases be improved? What tools do we need? What are medical intelligence and syndromic surveillance, and how are they used or how could they be used?

Answer 1

1. Healthcare involves a diverse set of public and private data collection systems including health surveys,administrative enrollment and billing records,and medical records,used by various entities including hospitals,physicians and health plans.

2. Data collection tools refer to the devices,instruments that used to collect data. such as a paper questionnaire or computer assissted interviewing system,case studies,check lists,interviews,observations and surveys or questionnaires.

3. Syndromic Surveillance is an investigational approach where health department staff,assissted by automated data acquisition and generation of statistical alerts,monitor disease indicators in realtime or non realtime to detect outbreak of disease earlier than would otherwise be possible with traditional public health methods.

Medical Intelligence is defined by department of defense as the category of intelligence resulting from collection, evaluation, analysis and interpretation of foreign medical, bio-scientific and environmental information that is of interest to strategic planning and to military medical planning and operations for the conservation of the fighting strungth of friendly forces.

4. Used for the purpose of detecting and characterizing outbreaks of disease in humans and animals in a timely manner.