Electronic Transfer of Data for Surveillance of Communicable Disease

Abstract

Over the last three years the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (CDSC) has developed, in collaboration with other sections of the Public Health Laboratory Service, electronic information systems for communicable disease surveillance. The systems include an application that permits the extraction of data from a wide variety of different laboratory systems and the recoding, manipulation, and electronic transfer of data to CDSC, and a communication and information system based on a wide area network of micro-computers. The systems have strengthened CDSC’s surveillance function through improvements in the speed with which the surveillance cycle of collection, collation, analysis and interpretation of data, and dissemination of information can be completed.