ArticleCanada communicable disease report = Releve des maladies transmissibles au Canada2015
Evaluation of a national pharmacy-based syndromic surveillance system.
Article in Canada communicable disease report = Releve des maladies transmissibles au Canada, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 2 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
- Early Detection and Monitoring of Gastrointestinal Infections Using Syndromic Surveillance: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Pooled it
- Syndromic surveillance systems to detect outbreaks of gastroenteritis in high-income countries: a scoping review.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Feasibility of using community pharmacy sales of over-the-counter respiratory products as a syndromic surveillance indicator: a pilot study from Sofia, Bulgaria.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Constructing big data prevention and control model for public health emergencies in China: A grounded theory study.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- 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
- Correlation-Based Discovery of Disease Patterns for Syndromic Surveillance.Frontiers in big data · 2021Article
- Unsupervised extraction of epidemic syndromes from participatory influenza surveillance self-reported symptoms.PLoS computational biology · 2019Article
- Big Data and the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN).Canada communicable disease report = Releve des maladies transmissibles au Canada · 2015Article
- Big Data is changing the battle against infectious diseases.Canada communicable disease report = Releve des maladies transmissibles au Canada · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundTraditional public health surveillance provides accurate information but is typically not timely. New early warning systems leveraging timely electronic data are emerging, but the public health value of such systems is still largely unknown.
objectiveTo assess the timeliness and accuracy of pharmacy sales data for both respiratory and gastrointestinal infections and to determine its utility in supporting the surveillance of gastrointestinal illness.
methodsTo assess timeliness, a prospective and retrospective analysis of data feeds was used to compare the chronological characteristics of each data stream. To assess accuracy, Ontario antiviral prescriptions were compared to confirmed cases of influenza and cases of influenza-like-illness (ILI) from August 2009 to January 2015 and Nova Scotia sales of respiratory over-the-counter products (OTC) were compared to laboratory reports of respiratory pathogen detections from January 2014 to March 2015. Enteric outbreak data (2011-2014) from Nova Scotia were compared to sales of gastrointestinal products for the same time period. To assess utility, pharmacy sales of gastrointestinal products were monitored across Canada to detect unusual increases and reports were disseminated to the provinces and territories once a week between December 2014 and March 2015 and then a follow-up evaluation survey of stakeholders was conducted.
resultsOntario prescriptions of antivirals between 2009 and 2015 correlated closely with the onset dates and magnitude of confirmed influenza cases. Nova Scotia sales of respiratory OTC products correlated with increases in non-influenza respiratory pathogens in the community. There were no definitive correlations identified between the occurrence of enteric outbreaks and the sales of gastrointestinal OTCs in Nova Scotia. Evaluation of national monitoring showed no significant increases in sales of gastrointestinal products that could be linked to outbreaks that included more than one province or territory.
conclusionMonitoring of pharmacy-based drug prescriptions and OTC sales can provide a timely and accurate complement to traditional respiratory public health surveillance activities but initial evaluation did not show that tracking gastrointestinal-related OTCs were of value in identifying an enteric disease outbreak in more than one province or territory during the study period.
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