JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The risk of emergence of a large number of severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) cases is a global concern. SARI can overwhelm the healthcare capacity and cause several deaths. Therefore, the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) will explore the feasibility of implementing an automatic electronically based SARI surveillance system at a tertiary care hospital in Austria, as part of the hospital network, initiated by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Objective:

We aim: i) to investigate the availability of routinely collected health record data pertaining to respiratory infections and the optimal approach to utilize such available data for a systematic surveillance of SARI in a real world setting; ii) to describe the characteristics of SARI patients, before and after the beginning of the Corona disease (COVID-19) pandemic; iii) and to investigate the feasibility of identifying the risk factors for a severe outcome (Intensive Care Unit admission/death) in SARI patients.

Methods:

We will test the feasibility, as part of a large European network, at a tertiary care hospital in the province of Lower Austria (called Regional Hospital Wiener Neustadt). It will be a cross-sectional study, for the inventory of the electronic data records and implementation of automatic data retrieval for the period of January 2019 through the end of December 2022. The analysis will include: i) exploration of the database structure, ii) descriptive analysis of the general characteristics of the SARI patients, iii) estimating the SARI incidence rate; and iv) assessment of the risk factors and different levels of severity of SARI patients, using logistic regression analysis.

Results:

This will be the first study to assess the feasibility of SARI surveillance at one large 800-bed-tertiary care hospitals in Austria. It will provide a general overview of the potentials of establishing a hospital-based surveillance system on SARI. In addition, if successful, the electronic surveillance will be able to improve the response to early warning signs of new SARI, which will inform better the policy-makers for the strengthening of the surveillance system.

Conclusions:

The findings will support the learning of how to expand to other hospitals in Austria and include them in the SARI hospital-based surveillance system. This network will be of help for Austria towards the preparedness for future pandemics.