Surveillance, finding outbreaks, and the impact of "shocks" (from ESCAIDE 2024)

Topic outline

• Surveillance, finding outbreaks, and the impact of "shocks"

  Surveillance, finding outbreaks, and the impact of "shocks"

  This session was held as a part of ESCAIDE 2024, ECDC's annual conference on applied infectious disease epidemiology. 

  Want to know more?

  You can find more information about ESCAIDE here: https://www.escaide.eu, and about ECDC's work here: https://ecdc.europa.eu.
• Objectives

  Objectives

  After completing watching this video, participants should be able to:
  

  • Understand the basic purpose of using methods like the Farrington algorithm to automatically spot unusual increases in disease reports;
  • Identify at least one challenge in interpreting surveillance data;
  • Recognise the importance of adjustments in detection methods.
• Watch the session

  Watch the session

  Please note: the session for this course starts at 26:50.
• Summary of the content

  Summary of the content

  Summary of the content

  This presentation is part of a plenary session held at ESCAIDE 2024, titled "Surveillance of infectious diseases: how can we better tell what's going on". This presentation focuses on advances in algorithms for signal detection in infectious disease surveillance. The speaker, Andre, details the development and application of the Farrington algorithm and its subsequent adaptations used by UK Health Security Agency to detect unusual patterns potentially indicating outbreaks in surveillance data. The presentation highlights the importance of understanding factors influencing infectious disease epidemiology, such as population mixing patterns and mobility, and how external shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted surveillance time series data through lockdowns, changed health-seeking behaviour, and altered testing practices. It discusses the challenges these shocks posed for standard algorithms, leading to modifications like incorporating interrupted time series analysis to maintain algorithm performance and minimize false positives. The importance of methodology review, performance evaluation, and making code accessible via public repositories is emphasized. Finally, it touches upon the practicalities of implementation, resource accessibility for public health institutions, and the potential for wider data sharing.
  
  

  Chairs (learn more about the chairs on the ESCAIDE website)

  • Ágnes Hajdu - Senior Advisor at the Unit of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology of the National Center for Public Health and Pharmacy, Hungary
  • Alicia Barrasa - EPIET Alumni Network, Spain

  Speaker (learn more about the speakers on the ESCAIDE website)

  • André Charlett - Head of Statistics, Modelling and Economics Division, UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA)
• Additional resources

  Additional resources
  • URLSide Session 3: Initiatives on integrated surveillance - European Health Union/SCBTH | #ESCAIDE2023

    You may want to increase your knowledge of initiatives on integrated surveillance by listening to this side session from ESCAIDE 2023.
    

  • URLCheck other ESCAIDE materials on the Learning Portal
• Contacts

  Contacts

  For more information about ESCAIDE, please see www.escaide.eu, or contact the ESCAIDE team at escaide.conference@ecdc.europa.eu. 

  If you have questions regarding other training initiatives please contact: courses@ecdc.europa.eu.

  If you have technical issues please contact ECDC Helpdesk - ICT Front Office ICT.FrontOffice@ecdc.europa.eu.

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