ArticleEpidemiology and infection2014
Syndromic surveillance for local outbreak detection and awareness: evaluating outbreak signals of acute gastroenteritis in telephone triage, web-based queries and over-the-counter pharmacy sales.
Article in Epidemiology and infection, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Drug sales data for gastrointestinal infections surveillance: a systematic review up to 2025.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2026Pooled it
- The role of pharmacists and pharmacy team members in the prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of outbreaks - a global rapid systematic review.BMC public health · 2026Pooled it
- The effectiveness of syndromic surveillance for the early detection of waterborne outbreaks: a systematic review.BMC infectious diseases · 2021Pooled it
- The Application of Internet-Based Sources for Public Health Surveillance (Infoveillance): Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Pooled it
- Syndromic surveillance systems to detect outbreaks of gastroenteritis in high-income countries: a scoping review.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Time series anomaly detection in helpline call trends for early detection of COVID-19 spread across Sweden, 2020.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Comparing healthcare needs by language: interpreted Arabic and Somali telehealth calls in two regions of Sweden, 2014-18.European journal of public health · 2024Article
- Gastroenteritis Outbreaks after Contamination of Water Supply Systems: Public Health Response Gaps and Challenges, Greece, 2004-2023.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Factors Associated with the Public's Intention to Report Adverse Drug Reactions to Community Pharmacists in the Makkah Region of Saudi Arabia: An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior.Patient preference and adherence · 2024Article
- DiD IT?: a differences-in-differences investigation tool to quantify the impact of local incidents on public health using real-time syndromic surveillance health data.Epidemiology and infection · 2023Article
- The amount of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater relates to the development of the pandemic and its burden on the health system.iScience · 2022Article
- The potential roles of pharmacy medication sales data to augment the syndromic surveillance system in response to COVID-19 and preparedness for other future infectious disease outbreaks in Indonesia.The International journal of health planning and management · 2022Article
- Evaluating multi-purpose syndromic surveillance systems - a complex problem.Online journal of public health informatics · 2021Article
- Large waterborneEuro surveillance : bulletin Europeen sur les maladies transmissibles = European communicable disease bulletin · 2020Article
- Developing influenza and respiratory syncytial virus activity thresholds for syndromic surveillance in England.Epidemiology and infection · 2019Article
- The burden of seasonal respiratory infections on a national telehealth service in England.Epidemiology and infection · 2017Article
- Early outbreak detection by linking health advice line calls to water distribution areas retrospectively demonstrated in a large waterborne outbreak of cryptosporidiosis in Sweden.BMC public health · 2017Article
- Developing and validating a new national remote health advice syndromic surveillance system in England.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2017Article
- Evaluating Hospital-Based Surveillance for Outbreak Detection in Bangladesh: Analysis of Healthcare Utilization Data.PLoS medicine · 2017Article
- Disease surveillance based on Internet-based linear models: an Australian case study of previously unmodeled infection diseases.Scientific reports · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
For the purpose of developing a national system for outbreak surveillance, local outbreak signals were compared in three sources of syndromic data--telephone triage of acute gastroenteritis, web queries about symptoms of gastrointestinal illness, and over-the-counter (OTC) pharmacy sales of antidiarrhoeal medication. The data sources were compared against nine known waterborne and foodborne outbreaks in Sweden in 2007-2011. Outbreak signals were identified for the four largest outbreaks in the telephone triage data and the two largest outbreaks in the data on OTC sales of antidiarrhoeal medication. No signals could be identified in the data on web queries. The signal magnitude for the fourth largest outbreak indicated a tenfold larger outbreak than officially reported, supporting the use of telephone triage data for situational awareness. For the two largest outbreaks, telephone triage data on adult diarrhoea provided outbreak signals at an early stage, weeks and months in advance, respectively, potentially serving the purpose of early event detection. In conclusion, telephone triage data provided the most promising source for surveillance of point-source outbreaks.
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