Use of Severity Indicators in a Public Health Surveillance System

While other surveillance systems may only use death and admissions as severity indicators, these serious events may overshadow the more subtle severity signals based on appointment type, disposition from an outpatient setting, and whether that patient had to return for care if they their condition has not improved.  This abstract discusses how these additional data fields were utilized in a fusion model to improve the Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE).