The ISDS Global Outreach Committee will be hosting a special webinar presented by the Global Health and Security Initiative entitled "Developing Strategic Learning Capabilities in Regional Disease Surveillance Networks" on Monday, May 17th from 10:00-11:00 AM EST. Louise Gresham and colleagues will be speaking about the CHORDS Project and its role in developing IHR competencies around the world.
Full event details including registration and speaker information available here.
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29 April 2010
20 April 2010
Announcing the 2010 Public Health Practice and Research Syndromic Surveillance Challenge
The International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS) announces the 2010 Public Health Practice and Research Syndromic Surveillance Challenge:
Consistent with the theme of this year’s annual ISDS conference, the public health and research challenge aims to enhance the synergy between research, informatics, and practice in public health. Through May 15th, 2010, public health practitioners are asked to submit disease surveillance practice and research issues or challenges they are facing (e.g., “I need to have a measure of excess morbidity due to a-b-c,” or “I need a visualization that will help me achieve x-y-z”). Submitted challenges must be those that can be addressed using a dataset that is publicly available, or contributed by the challenger, with Distribute project data being one of the sources. The hope is that novel approaches to visualizing or analyzing data will be developed that can be applied to address challenges that public health practitioners are facing.
ISDS will provide publicly available datasets and will supply a Distribute data set for researchers and informaticists to work with. Individuals or groups will have 3 months to work on solutions to the challenges posted by practitioners. In August, the solutions will be presented to practitioners, who will have an opportunity to assess and comment on the best solution(s) to the challenges they are facing. The Scientific Program Committee will make the final selection of winners.
An important challenge requirement is that all work developed for the contest is clearly and efficiently presented. Those who respond to the technical challenges must be willing to make their work available to the scientific and public health communities at large. Authorship could come in the form of an ISDS online publication (ie, through a Knol or open access online journal), a conference presentation slot, or special speaking engagement depending on the quality of work that the contest delivers.
The Scientific Program Committee hopes that this contest will stimulate interest and will induce contribution of other challenge problems for future consideration.
Data Sets
The contest will provide datasets, with examples including the following:
- Sample Distribute aggregate febrile, respiratory and influenza-like illness (ILI) syndrome file
- Google Flu Trends ILI search query index aggregate file
- US regional aggregate sentinel surveillance ILI file
- Sample datasets provided by challengers, specific to their proposed challenge
Contest Rules
• Public health practitioners who wish to declare a challenge must do so by May 15th. Please send an email to Don Olson with the technical challenge you are posing. Be sure to include as much background information and detail as possible as well as an email address where you can be reached if there are follow-up questions about the issue you are raising. Challenges that cannot be addressed using the available data will be disqualified.
• Those who are interested in developing solutions to the technical challenge must register their intent to participate by May 30th by sending an email to Don Olson. The challenge will proceed only if a sufficient number of people have registered. The contest will be canceled and you will receive notification by June 7th if there has not been sufficient interest. However, if you are still interested in working on a solution to the technical challenges posed, please contact Don for follow-up through the ISDS Research Committee.
• Depending on the number of technical challenges submitted and the number of people who have registered to develop solutions to these challenges, the Scientific Program Committee may choose to narrow down the number of technical challenges. Again, registrants will be notified by June 1st of the final selection of challenges, which will be posted on the ISDS web site.
• Challenge datasets will be sent to the registrants by June 7th, 2010.
• Participants may submit only one solution per challenge. However, there is no limit to the number of challenges that an individual or group can respond to.
• Successful entrants will provide a sufficiently documented and cited, yet brief methodology. Outputs of proprietary or restricted-access methods should not be used.
• Submissions of solutions should be sent to Don Olson by August 16th, 2010. Please include an explanation of the solution that includes sufficient detail of the methods that would allow someone else to implement them. Code and any accompanying output can be included. The submission need not be formatted for a conference abstract or a publication.
• Challenge Timeline:
o May 15 -- Last day for submitting a syndromic analytic challenge
o May 30 -- Last day to register to solve the analytic challenge
o June 1 -- Challenges selected by panel announced
o June 7 -- Challenge datasets sent to participants
o Aug. 16 -- Final day for solutions to be submitted
o Sept 17 -- Winner(s) announced
Winner Selection
• Each team will be evaluated separately on each of the technical challenges that practitioners submitted. The solutions will be posted on the ISDS web site in August and public health practitioners will have a three-week period to review the solutions and provide their input to the Scientific Program Committee on the best submission.
• The Scientific Program Committee will judge submissions based on scientific merit, methodology, and the degree to which practitioners feel the solution meets their needs. Winners will be announced by September 17th, 2010.
• In an upcoming meeting, the 2010 ISDS Scientific Program Committee will discuss possible plans for a special session at this year's conference based on the contest. We hope that all of the entrants will be able to attend and participate in the conference which will be held November 30 - December 2, 2010 in Park City, Utah. Please check www.syndromic.org for conference details and updates as they become available.
Winning Prize
Apart from the bragging rights, the team submitting the winning entry will receive a $300 cash prize and the “2010 ISDS Public Health Practice and Research Syndromic Surveillance Challenge Award” at the annual conference in Park City, Utah.
Consistent with the theme of this year’s annual ISDS conference, the public health and research challenge aims to enhance the synergy between research, informatics, and practice in public health. Through May 15th, 2010, public health practitioners are asked to submit disease surveillance practice and research issues or challenges they are facing (e.g., “I need to have a measure of excess morbidity due to a-b-c,” or “I need a visualization that will help me achieve x-y-z”). Submitted challenges must be those that can be addressed using a dataset that is publicly available, or contributed by the challenger, with Distribute project data being one of the sources. The hope is that novel approaches to visualizing or analyzing data will be developed that can be applied to address challenges that public health practitioners are facing.
ISDS will provide publicly available datasets and will supply a Distribute data set for researchers and informaticists to work with. Individuals or groups will have 3 months to work on solutions to the challenges posted by practitioners. In August, the solutions will be presented to practitioners, who will have an opportunity to assess and comment on the best solution(s) to the challenges they are facing. The Scientific Program Committee will make the final selection of winners.
An important challenge requirement is that all work developed for the contest is clearly and efficiently presented. Those who respond to the technical challenges must be willing to make their work available to the scientific and public health communities at large. Authorship could come in the form of an ISDS online publication (ie, through a Knol or open access online journal), a conference presentation slot, or special speaking engagement depending on the quality of work that the contest delivers.
The Scientific Program Committee hopes that this contest will stimulate interest and will induce contribution of other challenge problems for future consideration.
Data Sets
The contest will provide datasets, with examples including the following:
- Sample Distribute aggregate febrile, respiratory and influenza-like illness (ILI) syndrome file
- Google Flu Trends ILI search query index aggregate file
- US regional aggregate sentinel surveillance ILI file
- Sample datasets provided by challengers, specific to their proposed challenge
Contest Rules
• Public health practitioners who wish to declare a challenge must do so by May 15th. Please send an email to Don Olson with the technical challenge you are posing. Be sure to include as much background information and detail as possible as well as an email address where you can be reached if there are follow-up questions about the issue you are raising. Challenges that cannot be addressed using the available data will be disqualified.
• Those who are interested in developing solutions to the technical challenge must register their intent to participate by May 30th by sending an email to Don Olson. The challenge will proceed only if a sufficient number of people have registered. The contest will be canceled and you will receive notification by June 7th if there has not been sufficient interest. However, if you are still interested in working on a solution to the technical challenges posed, please contact Don for follow-up through the ISDS Research Committee.
• Depending on the number of technical challenges submitted and the number of people who have registered to develop solutions to these challenges, the Scientific Program Committee may choose to narrow down the number of technical challenges. Again, registrants will be notified by June 1st of the final selection of challenges, which will be posted on the ISDS web site.
• Challenge datasets will be sent to the registrants by June 7th, 2010.
• Participants may submit only one solution per challenge. However, there is no limit to the number of challenges that an individual or group can respond to.
• Successful entrants will provide a sufficiently documented and cited, yet brief methodology. Outputs of proprietary or restricted-access methods should not be used.
• Submissions of solutions should be sent to Don Olson by August 16th, 2010. Please include an explanation of the solution that includes sufficient detail of the methods that would allow someone else to implement them. Code and any accompanying output can be included. The submission need not be formatted for a conference abstract or a publication.
• Challenge Timeline:
o May 15 -- Last day for submitting a syndromic analytic challenge
o May 30 -- Last day to register to solve the analytic challenge
o June 1 -- Challenges selected by panel announced
o June 7 -- Challenge datasets sent to participants
o Aug. 16 -- Final day for solutions to be submitted
o Sept 17 -- Winner(s) announced
Winner Selection
• Each team will be evaluated separately on each of the technical challenges that practitioners submitted. The solutions will be posted on the ISDS web site in August and public health practitioners will have a three-week period to review the solutions and provide their input to the Scientific Program Committee on the best submission.
• The Scientific Program Committee will judge submissions based on scientific merit, methodology, and the degree to which practitioners feel the solution meets their needs. Winners will be announced by September 17th, 2010.
• In an upcoming meeting, the 2010 ISDS Scientific Program Committee will discuss possible plans for a special session at this year's conference based on the contest. We hope that all of the entrants will be able to attend and participate in the conference which will be held November 30 - December 2, 2010 in Park City, Utah. Please check www.syndromic.org for conference details and updates as they become available.
Winning Prize
Apart from the bragging rights, the team submitting the winning entry will receive a $300 cash prize and the “2010 ISDS Public Health Practice and Research Syndromic Surveillance Challenge Award” at the annual conference in Park City, Utah.
30 March 2010
Research Committee Update: March Webinar Recording and April Literature Review
The recording of the Research Committee's webinar on "Overview and Public Health Surveillance Utility of Poison Center Data" is now available for viewing.
Looking ahead, the Literature Review subcommittee will be hosting a presentation by Michael A. Horst, PhD, MPHS, MS, whose paper "Observing the Spread of Common Illnesses Through a Community: Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for Surveillance" recently appeared in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
The subcommittee found this article particularly important because it represents an initiative to link health risk mapping with cluster detection methods that many health monitors employ. It is a link between classical spatial epidemiology and the ad-hoc methods needed for day-to-day surveillance.
The presentation will take place on Thursday, April 22nd at 12:00 pm EST.
Looking ahead, the Literature Review subcommittee will be hosting a presentation by Michael A. Horst, PhD, MPHS, MS, whose paper "Observing the Spread of Common Illnesses Through a Community: Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for Surveillance" recently appeared in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
The subcommittee found this article particularly important because it represents an initiative to link health risk mapping with cluster detection methods that many health monitors employ. It is a link between classical spatial epidemiology and the ad-hoc methods needed for day-to-day surveillance.
The presentation will take place on Thursday, April 22nd at 12:00 pm EST.
PHPC Webinar: Integration of Reported and Syndromic Disease System Information
For its March meeting, the Public Health Practice Committee hosted a webinar on "Integration of Reported and Syndromic Disease System Information."
This webinar was initiated by ISDS member Amy Ising, and presented by Aaron-Kite Powell, MS, Surveillance Epidemiologist in the Bureau of Epidemiology at the Florida Department of Health.
Aaron Kite-Powell gave an overview regarding how Florida is incorporating visualizations of their reportable disease data into their syndromic surveillance system. The presentation was followed by a general discussion regarding the need for and benefits of comparing - on a regular, systematic basis - reportable disease data and syndromic surveillance data.
As a follow up to the discussion, we would like to invite further comments on this post, especially around the following:
Is anyone presenting reportable disease data and syndromic data in the same interface? If so, how? For example, are you incorporating aggregate reportable disease data into your syndromic system (as is FL DoH) or are you making syndromic information available in your reportable disease system? If not, do you have plans to? Why? Why not?
View webinar recording
This webinar was initiated by ISDS member Amy Ising, and presented by Aaron-Kite Powell, MS, Surveillance Epidemiologist in the Bureau of Epidemiology at the Florida Department of Health.
Aaron Kite-Powell gave an overview regarding how Florida is incorporating visualizations of their reportable disease data into their syndromic surveillance system. The presentation was followed by a general discussion regarding the need for and benefits of comparing - on a regular, systematic basis - reportable disease data and syndromic surveillance data.
As a follow up to the discussion, we would like to invite further comments on this post, especially around the following:
Is anyone presenting reportable disease data and syndromic data in the same interface? If so, how? For example, are you incorporating aggregate reportable disease data into your syndromic system (as is FL DoH) or are you making syndromic information available in your reportable disease system? If not, do you have plans to? Why? Why not?
View webinar recording
10 March 2010
Research Committee March Webinar: "Overview and Public Health Surveillance Utility of Poison Center Data"
The ISDS Research Committee will be hosting a webinar, "Overview and Public Health Surveillance Utility of Poison Center Data," on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 from 11:00 am - 12:30 pm US EST.
Speaker/Panelists:
Jonathan Colvin, Assistant Director, Drug and Poison Information Center
Along with two prominent ISDS members experienced in the public health application of these data:
Bill Storm, Syndromic Surveillance Epidemiologist, Ohio Department of Health
Amy Ising, NC DETECT Program Director, Dept of Emergency Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Register here
Speaker/Panelists:
Jonathan Colvin, Assistant Director, Drug and Poison Information Center
Along with two prominent ISDS members experienced in the public health application of these data:
Bill Storm, Syndromic Surveillance Epidemiologist, Ohio Department of Health
Amy Ising, NC DETECT Program Director, Dept of Emergency Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Register here
Meaningful Use Webinar Slides & Presentation Now Available
If you weren't able to join ISDS and the Distribute Community of Practice for our "Meaningful Use" webinar last week, the slides and recording are now available online.
Slides
Recording
Please don't forget to submit your feedback on this important topic to us by Friday, March 12th! The ISDS Board of Directors will be incorporating your input into their final recommendation.
Slides
Recording
Please don't forget to submit your feedback on this important topic to us by Friday, March 12th! The ISDS Board of Directors will be incorporating your input into their final recommendation.
04 March 2010
ISDS Seeks Comments on the Proposed Rules for Meaningful Use
Two proposed regulations from ONCHIT and CMS provide certification criteria and measures for implementing the first stage of electronic health record (EHR) incentive programs enacted under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). These programs will provide reimbursements to hospitals and providers who become "meaningful users" of EHR technology. Under the proposed regulations, one goal of meaningful use (MU) is to improve population and public health.
The ISDS Board will submit comments on the proposed regulations by the March 15, 2010 deadline. In particular, ISDS Board wants to focus their comments on two proposed certification criteria and measures (or tests) that impact the ability of public health authorities to conduct surveillance using syndromic or electronic health care data. These can be viewed in this document.
ISDS is currently seeking input from ISDS membership and the Distribute CoP on these criteria and measures. Input will be completely voluntary and confidential, and the information will be used to assemble a well informed and robust commentary from the ISDS Board. Please take 5-10 minutes to complete our on-line comment collection form.
To learn more about Meaningful Use, please register for our 30 minute webinar, "Meaningful Use: What it is and why it matters" This webinar will help you gain a better understanding of Meaningful Use, how it may impact your surveillance work, and how you can work with ISDS to represent your perspective and that of your local or state health agency.
Please let us know your thoughts by submitting your comments, attending the webinar, or replying to this blog post.
Best Regards,
Charlie Ishikawa
Community of Practice Coordinator, Distribute
ISDS
The ISDS Board will submit comments on the proposed regulations by the March 15, 2010 deadline. In particular, ISDS Board wants to focus their comments on two proposed certification criteria and measures (or tests) that impact the ability of public health authorities to conduct surveillance using syndromic or electronic health care data. These can be viewed in this document.
ISDS is currently seeking input from ISDS membership and the Distribute CoP on these criteria and measures. Input will be completely voluntary and confidential, and the information will be used to assemble a well informed and robust commentary from the ISDS Board. Please take 5-10 minutes to complete our on-line comment collection form.
To learn more about Meaningful Use, please register for our 30 minute webinar, "Meaningful Use: What it is and why it matters" This webinar will help you gain a better understanding of Meaningful Use, how it may impact your surveillance work, and how you can work with ISDS to represent your perspective and that of your local or state health agency.
Please let us know your thoughts by submitting your comments, attending the webinar, or replying to this blog post.
Best Regards,
Charlie Ishikawa
Community of Practice Coordinator, Distribute
ISDS
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