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.
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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
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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