Syndromic Surveillance

"The CDC defines syndromic surveillance, as the study of real time health related data that precede diagnosis and signals a sufficient probability that cause an outbreak of a disease which warrants further public health response. These data streams have also been used as input to statistical algorithms designed to detect bioterrorist attacks. Finally, the data can also be used to track the development of a disease as well as determine the effectiveness of medical strategies designed to destroy the biological agent causing the disease. Problems occur with syndromic surveillance strategies when the analysts miss relatively low correlated syndromes and non-health factors with high correlations to the disease process provide false signals. Examples are in the use of absenteeism as a syndrome for a disease when the absenteeism actually resulted from holidays or inclement weather, or the use of over-the-counter drugs as the syndromic agent when the sales were actually driven by a pharmaceutical company’s promotional advertisement. (Syndromic Surveillance: Early Warning Systems for Monitoring Emerging Outbreaks of Health Events from Either Natural Causes or from Bioterrorists -Edward L. Melnick) Impact Factor of a scholarly journal is calculated by measuring the average number of citations to recent articles published in the particular journal. Impact factor gives the importance of a Specific journal with respect to other journals. Impact factor is calculated based on the average number of citations a paper published in a particular journal receives in a span of two years. Impact factor for the new journals will be considered after two years. Impact factor of a particular journal will give complete picture of the quality and standards of the journals. For example, if a journal has an impact factor of 5 in 2011, then its papers published in 2009 and 2010 received 5 citations each on average in 2011. The 2011 impact factor of a journal would be calculated as follows: X = Number citation for the articles published during 2009 and 2010. Y = the total number of articles published by that journal in 2009 and 2010 2011 impact factor = X/Y. "

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Last date updated on April, 2024