Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Support transmission of different comprehensions and projections across teams
.
Tools need to allow sharing of intuitive assessments between biosurveillance
personnel and other health professionals. Currently, data analysis and detec-
tion tools are not integrated with Listservs and other collaboration tools. Yet,
understanding individual interpretations and team consensus is paramount
to effective SA and decision-making performance.
4.4 Conclusions
The outcome of the Milwaukee cryptosporidosis outbreak in 1993 may have
turned out differently if a syndromic system had been in place at that time
that would have detected the outbreak from noncritical sources (e.g., unusu-
ally high sales of over-the-counter medications) (Cooper et al. 2006). From a
global perspective, the growth of international travel and trade presents a
real and significant challenge to effective management of disease outbreaks.
Consider, for example, that after about a year following its initial outbreak in
November 2002, SARS had spread to about 30 different countries, affecting
approximately 8000 individuals. Yet, within just 2 months following its ini-
tial outbreak in April 2009, the novel influenza A (H1N1) virus had spread to
74 countries, with nearly 30,000 confirmed cases reported. Without question,
timely and accurate detection and response to a potential disease outbreak
in its early stages is absolutely essential to ensure both global public health
as well as economic stability.
Yet, the development of biosurveillance systems is still in its infancy. To
date, the majority of biosurveillance system design, analysis, and evalua-
tion has been geared toward specific data sources and detection algorithms,
but less effort has been put into how these systems will interact with their
human operators. Yet, overlooking user requirements in the design pro-
cess can lead to suboptimal human-system performance. Furthermore, not
enough attention has been directed toward addressing how biosurveil-
lance systems will support the information needs of dynamic ad-hoc teams
composed of individuals working for different organizations, or how these
systems will perform in an environment with numerous biosurveillance
algorithms, which may provide contradictory interpretations of ongoing
events. Companies such as InSTEDD are striving to develop more compre-
hensive integrated tools that can be effectively used across the broad spec-
trum of biosurveillance to enable health professionals to adapt to rapidly
changing data (Kass-Hout 2008). However, progress toward realizing the
full potential of biosurveillance systems is still limited.
To address these challenges, in this chapter, we argued that consider-
ation of the role of SA in biosurveillance is an important design objective.
Biosurveillance systems should be designed to support users' SA across all
