Distributed data processing for public health surveillance

Lazarus, Ross; Yih, Katherine; Platt, Richard

It would be straightforward to send detailed lists of encounters that are part of clusters directly to the relevant health department whenever the datacenter detects an event and sends an automated alert to a health department. We have not implemented this feature because all the participating health plans prefer to have an on-site clinical responder participate in the initial case evaluation with the public health agency. It would also be simple to allow designated public health personnel to initiate requests for specific line lists, even when no alert has occurred. Public health officials may, on occasion, wish to inspect the line lists to search for specific diagnoses that do not occur frequently enough to trigger an alert for their syndrome, but may be meaningful in the context of information that arises from other sources.