2014.ISDS.Abstracts.Final.pdf


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ISDS 2014 Conference Abstracts

Tractable Use Cases for Collaboration in Public Health 
Surveillance
Stacey Hoferka1, Caleb Wiedeman2, Ramona Lall3, Michael Coletta4 and Howard Burkom*5

1Illinois Department of Public Health, Chicago, IL, USA; 2Tennessee Department of Health, Nashville, TN, USA; 3New York City 
Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York, NY, USA; 4Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services, 
Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA, USA; 5Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, USA

Objective
The main objective is to broaden the collection of use cases 

developed by the ISDS Technical Conventions Committee (TCC) to 
enhance effective collaboration between public health practice and
analyst researchers in various disciplines and institutions. Panellists 
will present and motivate use case concepts including requirements 
for practical solution methods. Component objectives are to refine the 
presented use cases and to stimulate formation of new ones at local, 
state, and national levels.

Introduction
The mission of the ISDS TCC is to bridge the gap between the 

analytic needs of public health practitioners and the expertise
of researchers from other fields for the enhancement of disease 
surveillance, including situational awareness of chronic as well as 
infectious threats and follow-up activities such as case linkage and 
contact tracing. Committee activities to achieve this mission are 
identifying practical use cases, refining technical specifications 
in open forums, obtaining benchmark datasets for controlled 
dissemination, validating candidate methods, and sharing method 
documentation. In its first 2 years, the TCC has worked on three 
use cases and assisted with development of data use agreements to 
permit posting of benchmark datasets, http://www.syndromic.org/
communities/technical-conventions. Recent polling of the Biosense 
User Group indicated widespread interest in developing additional 
use cases. The proposed panel is intended to focus on practical 
applications of common interest, refine the use case development and 
dissemination process, and foster global interest in this process.

Description
After a review of the TCC mission and process, panellists will 

present use cases of current and ongoing concern. Use cases to be
presented are:

1) Monitoring the public health burden of extremes of heat and
cold, defined by excess, all-cause morbidity and risk ratios for specific 
conditions in at-risk populations.

2) Enhancement of state-level and county-level surveillance for
arboviral infections,

3) Using free-text chief complaints to categorize all Emergency
Department visits for surveillance and situational awareness in a large 
metropolitan setting,

4) Rapid coordination of state and local surveillance findings to
inform a coherent, timely regional and national health picture, from 
case definition to coordination/communication tools

Panellists will address the following items in the use case context:
a. Explain the use case and its public health importance.
b. Define component analytic sub-problems that could be

addressed.
c. Specify the requirements of a solution useful to their institution/

agency in terms of applicable features such as needed outputs products, 
software environment(s) and runtime, and necessary visualization.

d. Describe the envisioned application of requested methods and
the benefits for workflow, reporting, or communications with other 
agencies.

e. List information that would be needed to address the component 
problems, and discuss how data might be modified, truncated, 
simulated, or otherwise made available to provide this information 
for development, with or without data use agreements.

Audience Engagement
The audience will be prompted with questions on the relevance, 

aspects of common utility, technical feasibility, and data availability 
issues related to each use case. Subsequent TCC development of each 
one may be launched according to attendee participation and interest.
New and related use case ideas will also be solicited.

Keywords
weather-related; arbovirus; chief complaint; case definition; Technical 
Conventions

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

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * (1):e4, 201