Contact Information : Adam van Dijk - avandijk@kflapublichealth

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. Background 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. • 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. Fig. 2 – Enlarged map of respiratory activity for children 0-4 years of age on Nov. 17th subdivided by forward sortation area (postal boundary). Components 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. 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 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 - avandijk@kflapublichealth.ca