Evaluation of Electronic Ambulatory Care Data for Use in the Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network (ILINet)

Introduction During summer 2012, Washington State Department of Health (WA DOH) surveyed ILINet providers and found that more than half either utilize their electronic medical record system (EMRS) to gather and report weekly ILINet data, or intend to implement queries to do so in the future. There are a variety of EMRS being used state-wide, and providers that currently utilize these systems to report ILINet data apply a wide range of methods to query their data. There exists great interest in the evaluation of ambulatory care data within the context of Meaningful Use and little research is published in this area. WA DOH sought to evaluate electronic data from WA outpatient clinic networks in order to determine if a syndromic ILI definition previously validated for emergency department (ED) data accurately identified ILI visits in electronic ambulatory care data.