BACKGROUND Influenza intelligence in New South Wales (NSW), Australia is derived mainly from emergency department (ED) presentations and hospital and intensive care admissions, which represent only a portion of influenza-like illness (ILI) in the population. A substantial amount of the remaining data lies hidden in general practice (GP) records. Previous attempts in Australia to gather ILI data...

Objective: To use laboratory data to assess the specificity of syndromes used by the New York City emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance system to monitor influenza activity. Design: For the period from October 1, 2009 through March 31, 2010, we examined the correlation between citywide ED syndrome assignment and laboratory-confirmed influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). I...

OBJECTIVE To use laboratory data to assess the specificity of syndromes used by the New York City emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance system to monitor influenza activity. DESIGN For the period from October 1, 2009 through March 31, 2010, we examined the correlation between citywide ED syndrome assignment and laboratory-confirmed influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). I...

BACKGROUND We designed and validated a rule-based expert system to identify influenza like illness (ILI) from routinely recorded general practice clinical narrative to aid a larger retrospective research study into the impact of the 2009 influenza pandemic in New Zealand. METHODS Rules were assessed using pattern matching heuristics on routine clinical narrative. The system was trained using ...

In 2003, an internet-based monitoring system of influenza-like illness (ILI), the Great Influenza Survey (GIS), was initiated in Belgium. For the Flemish part of Belgium, we investigate the representativeness of the GIS population and assess the validity of the survey in terms of ILI incidence during eight influenza seasons (from 2003 through 2011). The validity is investigated by comparing est...

Flutracking is a national online community influenza-like illness (ILI) surveillance system that monitors weekly ILI activity and field vaccine effectiveness (FVE). This article reports on the 2011 and 2012 findings from Flutracking. There was a 22% increase in participants to 16,046 who completed at least one survey in 2012, compared with 2011 (13,101). By October 2012 (the end of the 2012 sea...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of our study was to more accurately characterize people reporting influenza-like illness (ILI) and evaluate trends in health care seeking and influenza diagnosis and treatment during the 2009 influenza pandemic. METHODS From September 2009 to March 2010, we ascertained ILI (fever with cough or sore throat), health care seeking, and clinical diagnosis and treatment of in...

BACKGROUND The disease burden associated with influenza in developing tropical and subtropical countries is poorly understood owing to the lack of a comprehensive disease surveillance system and information-exchange mechanisms. The impact of influenza on outpatient visits, hospital admissions, and deaths has not been fully demonstrated to date in south China. METHODS A time series Poisson gen...

Internet-based syndromic monitoring of acute respiratory illness in the general population of Germany, In March 2011, the German sentinel surveillance system for influenza (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Influenza (AGI)) was complemented by an Internet-based syndro-mic monitoring system (GrippeWeb) for acute respiratory infections (ARI) and influenza-like-illness (ILI). To assess representativeness of Gri...

BACKGROUND The wide availability of the Internet and the growth of digital communication technologies have become an important tool for epidemiological studies and health surveillance. Influenzanet is a participatory surveillance system monitoring the incidence of influenza-like illness (ILI) in Europe since 2003. It is based on data provided by volunteers who self-report their symptoms via the...