Layout 1


ISDS Annual Conference Proceedings 2012. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ISDS 2012 Conference Abstracts

An ISDS-Based Initiative for Conventions for
Biosurveillance Data Analysis Methods
Michael Coletta4, Howard Burkom*1, Jeffrey Johnson2 and Wendy Chapman3

1Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, USA; 2San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency, San Diego,
CA, USA; 3University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA; 4National Association of County and City Health Officials,
Washington, DC, USA

Objective
The panel will present the problem of standardizing analytic meth-

ods for public health disease surveillance, enumerate goals and con-
straints of various stakeholders, and present a straw-man framework
for a conventions group.

Introduction
Twelve years into the 21st century, after publication of hundreds of

articles and establishment of numerous biosurveillance systems
worldwide, there is no agreement among the disease surveillance
community on most effective technical methods for public health data
monitoring. Potential utility of such methods includes timely anom-
aly detection, threat corroboration and characterization, follow-up
analysis such as case linkage and contact tracing, and alternative uses
such as providing supplementary information to clinicians and policy
makers.

Several factors have impeded establishment of analytical conven-
tions. As immediate owners of the surveillance problem, public health
practitioners are overwhelmed and understaffed. Goals and resources
differ widely among monitoring institutions, and they do not speak
with a single voice. Limited funding opportunities have not been suf-
ficient for cross-disciplinary collaboration driven by these practi-
tioners. Most academics with the expertise and luxury of method
development cannot access surveillance data. Lack of data access is
a formidable obstacle to developers and has caused talented statisti-
cians, data miners, and other analysts to abandon the field. The result
is that older research is neglected and repeated, literature is flooded
with papers of varying utility, and the decision-maker seeking realis-
tic solutions without detailed technical knowledge faces a difficult
task.

Regarding conventions, the disease surveillance community can
learn from older, more established disciplines, but it also poses some
unique challenges. The general problem is that disease surveillance
lies on the fringe of disparate fields (biostatistics, statistical process
control, data mining, and others), and poses problems that do not ad-
equately fit conventional approaches in these disciplines.

In its eighth year, the International Society of Disease Surveillance
is well positioned to address the standardization problem because its
membership represents the involved stakeholders including progres-
sive programs worldwide as well as resource-limited settings, and
also because best practices in disease surveillance is fundamental to
its mission. The proposed panel is intended to discuss how an effec-
tive, sustainable technical conventions group might be maintained
and how it could support stakeholder institutions.

Methods
Members of a Technical Conventions Group would have experi-

ence and dedication to advancing the science of disease surveillance.
Primary functions would include: 

1. Specify and communicate technical problems facing profes-
sionals involved in routine monitoring of population health. Alterna-
tive use applications would also be considered, such as the use of
epidemiological findings to inform clinical diagnoses. 

2. Independently evaluate the utility of proposed analytical solu-
tions to well-defined problems in public health surveillance and con-
fer approval or certification, perhaps on several levels, such as
whether results can be replicated with shareable data. Approved so-
lutions might be restricted to commonly available software such as
the R language or Microsoft EXCEL.

3. Facilitate sharing of tools and methodologies to evaluate meth-
ods and to visualize their results

The framework to be discussed in the proposed panel would be a
means of keeping open lines of collaboration and idea-sharing. Over-
coming obstacles toward this goal is worthy of a conference panel
discussion whether or not it concludes that a conventions group is a
viable approach.

Results
Three 15-minute panelist talks are proposed:
1. Background: in-depth description of the dimensions of the prob-

lem above
2. Constraints facing public health practitioners and requirements

for practical analytic tools
3. Strawman conventions group: role, logistics, inclusiveness,

methods of communicating with stakeholders and related organiza-
tions and producing/disseminating output.

For the 45 minutes of discussion, the first 15-20 will invite reac-
tions to the first two talks to sharpen the scope of the effort. The re-
mainder of the session will cover the advisability, feasibility, and
logistics of an ISDS-based conventions group, and modify the straw-
man group concept.

Keywords
Standards; Data Analysis; Statistical Algorithms; Certification

*Howard Burkom
E-mail: howard.burkom@jhuapl.edu

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 5(1):e99, 2013