JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Outbreaks of infectious diseases pose great risks, including hospitalisation and death, to public health. Improving the management of outbreaks is therefore important for preventing widespread infection and mitigating associated risks. Mobile health (mHealth) technology provides new capabilities that can help better capture, monitor and manage infectious diseases, including the ability to quickly identify potential outbreaks.

Objective:

To develop a new infectious disease surveillance (IDS) system comprising of a mobile app for accurate data capturing and dashboard for better healthcare planning and decision making.

Methods:

We developed the IDS system using a two-pronged approach: 1) a literature review on available and similar disease surveillance systems to understand the fundamental requirements and 2) face-to-face interviews to collect specific user requirements from the local public health unit (PHU) team at the Nepean hospital, Nepean Blue Mountains Local Health District (NBMLHD), New South Wales (NSW), Australia.

Results:

We identified three fundamental requirements when designing an electronic IDS system, which are the ability to 1) accurately, 2) completely and 3) timely (ACT) capture and report outbreak data. We then developed our IDS system based on the workflow, scope and specific requirements gathered from the PHU team. We also produced detailed design and requirement guidelines. In our system, the outbreak data is captured and sent from anywhere using a mobile device or desktop PC (web interface). The data are processed using a client-server architecture and therefore can be analysed in real-time. Our dashboard is designed to provide a daily, weekly, monthly and, historical summary of outbreaks information, which can be potentially used to develop a future intervention plan. Specific information about certain outbreaks can also be visualised interactively to understand the unique characteristics of emerging infectious diseases.

Conclusions:

We demonstrate the design and development of our IDS system. We suggest that the use of a mobile app and dashboard will simplify the overall data collection, reporting and analysing processes, and thereby improving the public health responses and providing accurate registration of outbreak information. The accurate data reporting and collection are a major step forward to creating a better intervention plan for a future outbreak of infectious diseases.