Infectious Disease Syndromic Surveillance
Data to understand the health of our community right now
Overview
Syndromic surveillance is a tool that helps public health see what’s going on with our community’s health right now. It can spot signs of possible outbreaks, track health problems over time, and give a snapshot of how our community is doing.
In Alaska, this data is provided to the Section of Epidemiology through healthEconnect Alaska's health information exchange (HIE). Information from hospital emergency department visits is collected automatically, analyzed, and reviewed by epidemiologists.
Alaska started with the BioSense program in 2014. Today, we use a newer system called ESSENCE, with many more hospitals taking part. This upgrade is part of the National Syndromic Surveillance Program.
What are we using syndromic surveillance for?
Syndromic is used for surveillance of many diseases and health conditions. Two examples that the public can see are in the Respiratory Virus Snapshot and in the Alaska Opioid Data Dashboard. Both of these examples show syndromic data together with other data sources to give the best picture of a public health problem. Healthcare facilities may also use syndromic surveillance internally for respiratory virus surveillance.
Nationally, syndromic surveillance was an important tool in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Alaska, we used it to monitor COVID-19 and its related health effects.