Use of the Web to enhance infectious disease surveillance

The capacity of the Web to provide targeted information combined with its ability to facilitate online transactions warrants exploration of its use in surveillance for infectious diseases. By 2011, virtually all jurisdictions that conduct surveillance for notifiable diseases in the USA had deployed a Web-based surveillance system for data management and transmission of weekly records to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Challenges encountered in development of new secure Web-based systems are reviewed in this chapter, as is the status of use of the Web by jurisdictions to provide practical information including what, when, and how to report cases. We also provide practical considerations for design of websites to disseminate output from surveillance including public health guidance to clinicians. We also describe a conceptual design of a prototype website focused on infectious disease surveillance. This edition first published 2013