Journal de santé et d'informatique médicale

Two Years of Computer Supported Outbreak Detection in Sweden: the User’s Perspective

Abstract

Kling AM *,Hebing K ,Grünewald M ,Hulth A

Computer Assisted Search for Epidemics (CASE) is a framework for computer supported outbreak detection, developed at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control. The system is aimed to be a complement to the manual surveillance of the notifiable diseases and has been in routine use at the institute since August 2009. In this paper the workflow in the CASE project and the usage from the user’s perspective is presented. We describe the CASE team´s work, out of the routine document set up for the CASE project. The results of a survey, among the epidemiologists using CASE, are also presented. Our evaluation shows that CASE is a useful and important tool in the routine surveillance work performed by the epidemiologists at the institute. We believe there are several reasons for this success. One is the flexibility of CASE, which allows for different parameter settings for different diseases and the ability to tailor the system as needed. Other reasons are the close collaboration between the CASE team and the epidemiologists and the continuous development of the system which is adapted to the actual needs of the epidemiologists in charge of surveillance.