Roundtable on bioterrorism detection: information system-based surveillance

• Published in: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA Vol. 9; no. 2; pp. 105 - 115
• Main Authors: Lober, William B, Karras, Bryant Thomas, Wagner, Michael M, Overhage, J Marc, Davidson, Arthur J, Fraser, Hamish, Trigg, Lisa J, Mandl, Kenneth D, Espino, Jeremy U, Tsui, Fu-Chiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England American Medical Informatics Association 01.03.2002
• Subjects: Bioterrorism; Humans; Medical Informatics Applications; Population Surveillance - methods; The Role of Informatics in Preparedness for Bioterrorism and Disaster; United States; United States
• ISSN: 1067-5027; 1527-974X
• DOI: 10.1197/jamia.M1052

During the 2001 AMIA Annual Symposium, the Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Emergency Medicine Working Group hosted the Roundtable on Bioterrorism Detection. Sixty-four people attended the roundtable discussion, during which several researchers discussed public health surveillance systems designed to enhance early detection of bioterrorism events. These systems make secondary use of existing clinical, laboratory, paramedical, and pharmacy data or facilitate electronic case reporting by clinicians. This paper combines case reports of six existing systems with discussion of some common techniques and approaches. The purpose of the roundtable discussion was to foster communication among researchers and promote progress by 1) sharing information about systems, including origins, current capabilities, stages of deployment, and architectures; 2) sharing lessons learned during the development and implementation of systems; and 3) exploring cooperation projects, including the sharing of software and data. A mailing list server for these ongoing efforts may be found at http://bt.cirg.washington.edu.