1 Definition of surveillance
What exactly is infectious diesase surveillance?
The motto of public health surveillance ist information for action. This is also the shortest definition of surveillance - although it does not capture all elements. The definition of the WHO is more comprehensive:
Public health surveillance is an ongoing, systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of health-related data essential to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice. 1
This definition is very informative and gives us all important elements of a surveillance system.
| Element | Explanation |
|---|---|
| ongoing | surveillance is planned for a longer time (usually). This is in contrast to a scientific study or a survey |
| systematic | surveillance is a planned undertaking that works with clear definitions |
| collection | Events are collected and stored in datasystems |
| analysis | Indicators are calculated and the data is parsed according to time, place and person |
| interpretation | Assessment of the indicators and sense making |
| implementation of public health practice | The information guides public health responses |
Infectious disease surveillance is a subset of public health surveillance that is concerned with the surveillance of infectious diseases.
Learn more
- A history of the definitions can be found in the Article The Past, Present, and Future of Public Health Surveillance by Bernard Choi.
- The first definition in the modern form comes from Alexander Langumir - a very influential epidemiologist, who also did set up the FETP programme of the CDC. You can read about his life in his Wikipedia-Article.
World Health Organisation 2005 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3820481/table/tab5/↩︎