Assessing the use of hospital staff influenza-like absence (ILA) for enhancing hospital preparedness and national surveillance

作者：Drumright Lydia N^*; Frost Simon Dw; Elliot Alex J; Catchpole Mike; Pebody Richard G; Atkins Mark; Harrison John; Parker Penny; Holmes Alison H

来源：BMC Infectious Diseases, 2015, 15(1): 110.

DOI：10.1186/s12879-015-0789-z

• Influenza
• Syndromic surveillance
• Healthcare workers
• Emergency preparedness
• Informatics
• Epidemiology

Background: Early warning and robust estimation of influenza burden are critical to inform hospital preparedness and operational, treatment, and vaccination policies. Methods to enhance influenza-like illness (ILI) surveillance are regularly reviewed. We investigated the use of hospital staff 'influenza-like absences' (hospital staff-ILA), i.e. absence attributed to colds and influenza, to improve capture of influenza dynamics and provide resilience for hospitals.
Methods: Numbers and rates of hospital staff-ILA were compared to regional surveillance data on ILI primary-care presentations (15-64 years) and to counts of laboratory confirmed cases among hospitalised patients from April 2008 to April 2013 inclusive. Analyses were used to determine comparability of the ILI and hospital-ILA and how systems compared in early warning and estimating the burden of disease.
Results: Among 20,021 reported hospital-ILA and 4661 community ILI cases, correlations in counts were high and consistency in illness measurements was observed. In time series analyses, both hospital-ILA and ILI showed similar timing of the seasonal component. Hospital-ILA data often commenced and peaked earlier than ILI according to a Bayesian prospective alarm algorithm. Hospital-ILA rates were more comparable to model-based estimates of 'true' influenza burden than ILI.
Conclusions: Hospital-ILA appears to have the potential to be a robust, yet simple syndromic surveillance method that could be used to enhance estimates of disease burden and early warning, and assist with local hospital preparedness.

• 出版日期2015-3-1