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Detecting infection faster
2007.10.11 by Anne Granstrøm Ekeland
"Is there something going around, Doctor?" Most GPs have been asked this question from time to time. But do you have enough information to give a good answer on the spot? Researchers at Tromsø Telemedicine Laboratory now want to make the job easier for you.
In 2003, project manager Johan Gustav Bellika had an unpleasant personal experience. It gave him the idea of an electronic system which would be better at detecting disease trends in the population. Better information and faster diagnosis"My son was three months old and had not been vaccinated when he caught whooping cough in 2003. But it took a long time and several visits to the GP before we were given a diagnosis and could start the right treatment. During the same year, an infant in Bergen died of the same disease," says Bellika.He will now take part in creating an electronic system to detect symptoms of disease outbreaks ¬– for example, when several patients come to different GP practices with whooping cough. The system will be integrated in the electronic health record system which doctors already have installed, and they will check boxes for the patient's various symptoms. When several GPs report the same symptoms to the system, an automatic alert will be generated to warn that certain symptoms are being observed more frequently. In this way, all the doctors will receive early information about which diseases may be developing in the municipality, without needing to search actively for this information. The aim is that they will have access to more and better information, making it easier for them to arrive at more precise and faster diagnoses. The ambition is that this will enable them to start treatment faster. Taking action faster limits the infectionGlenn Severinsen is the infection control doctor in the municipality of Tromsø, and is taking part in the new project. Keeping track of the infection situation in the municipality is an important part of his work. In other words, it is his job to know what is "doing the rounds.""We need to have this overview as quickly as possible so that we can advise doctors about which diseases are going around in the population at any time. And the faster we get this overview, the earlier we can take steps to limit the number of people who get infected," he says. Legionnaires' disease is one example of an illness which it is important to discover quickly. In recent years, there have been several major outbreaks of this disease, and in 2005, 10 people died in an outbreak in the area around Sarpsborg and Fredrikstad. Could more people have been saved if the source of the infection had been tracked faster with the help of data from such an electronic notification system? Norway's current system for health surveillance, MSIS, issues weekly reports to all doctors with information about the number of cases of infectious diseases. But this data must be reported from laboratories and doctors and registered in MSIS - before it is issued as a notification to the doctors. This takes a long time, and both Severinsen and Bellika are hoping that their research will lead to an improved and faster version of MSIS. "We are often too late to limit the extent of disease outbreaks. We need better ICT systems to detect signs of such outbreaks and where they are occurring. This will make it easier to take action quickly," Severinsen concludes. |
The Emergency Department in Tromsø is providing dataProject Manager Johan Gustav Bellika says that the Emergency Department in Tromsø has recently been included in the project. "With the Emergency Department involved in providing disease data for the project, we have already covered half of those who consult doctors in Tromsø in a 24-hour period," says Bellika.And the Emergency Department staff see great benefits in developing such a system. "It is a great advantage that the data is collected automatically. GPs do not have to do anything to gather the data, but can get an overview of 'what is going around' served on a silver platter," says Anton Giæver, chief physician at the Emergency Department. Contact personIf you would like to know more about "symptom-based disease surveillance", you can contact the project manager, Johan Gustav Bellika, at mobile telephone (+47) 957 48 049 or email johan.gustav.bellika@telemed.no. You can also read more about Tromsø Telemedicine Laboratory on these webpages:The project is financed by The Northern Norway Regional Health Authority (Helse Nord RHF), The University of Tromsoe, The Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine and Tromsø Telemedicine Laboratory. |
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