Transcript Slide 1
Infection Watch Live – A real-time, geospatial mapping tool of hospital triage data for public consumption
Adam van Dijk MSc, Matt McPherson, Chris Sambol, Kieran M. Moore M.D.
Q
Dedicated to enhancing the health
and safety of Canadians through
public health informatics
Objective
To inform health professionals and the public directly about real-time
utilization of local Emergency Departments for respiratory and
gastrointestinal illness to enable enhanced communication and
collaboration between Public Health and health care workers.
Background
Most health units do not incorporate spatial information into disease
surveillance there is a growing body of knowledge that indicates such
data can be useful in tracking the spread of certain diseases.
The prompt detection of respiratory and gastrointestinal related
illnesses are of particular importance due to the rapid transmission
and potential burden on the community.
Components
Fig. 2 – Enlarged map of respiratory activity for children 0-4 years of age on Nov.
17th subdivided by forward sortation area (postal boundary).
Fig. 1 – Main landing page of Infection Watch Live showing real-time maps of illness activity.
User Acceptance
Publicly accessible website branded as Infection Watch Live (IWL)
which will publish local maps. The interface is a web-based GIS
application developed using ESRI ArcGIS Server.
System uses anonymized, non-identifiable, real-time, emergency
department respiratory and gastrointestinal visit data from an
already existing real-time Emergency Department Syndromic
Surveillance (EDSS) system in Kingston, Ontario.
Expected users include: medical officers of health, nurses,
physicians, hospital administrators, long-term care homes, schools,
child care, employers, EMS and local citizens.
Key functionalities:
Today’s Maps – snapshot view of current activity (Fig. 1 & 2)
Advanced Maps – simple GIS interface (Fig. 3)
Illness Trends – animated historical activity
WMS – ability to consume data in external applications
Prevention and Info – enables the community
Initial user feedback came from nurses, public health professionals,
community members, parents, and infection control practitioners.
Infection Watch Live was given a 3.9 average rating by users (scale: 0 = not
very useful – 5 = very useful)
Top three uses for IWL were: general community illness update, knowledge
will guide me in the care of my family, knowledge will aid in infection
prevention
Benefits
Fig. 3 – Screen shot of the advanced maps section on Infection Watch Live which
gives users more control over how they view local, illness activity maps.
Enables informed decision making in the community.
Provides the community with current Emergency Department utilization data
for respiratory and gastrointestinal illness.
Representing data by neighborhood enables the community to react to current
respiratory and gastrointestinal infections in their area.
Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Neil Watson, Marie Alexander, Paul Beach, Sevaan Franks,
Dillan Fernando, Niall Wallace, Justin Chenier and Ryan Backus – all of whom provided considerable help
and expertise in the development of this application.
Contact Information: Adam van Dijk - [email protected]
Next Steps
Expected public launch on January 1, 2009
Ongoing performance monitoring and user testing
Continue engaging local stakeholders
Possible future integration of additional data sources
Expansion to other health units