Now that the ACA (aka “Obamacare”) has gotten past the government shutdown, past the debt ceiling crisis, and is almost to grandmother’s house (once the website is up and working), it’s time to think about how it will affect surveillance.  Syndromic surveillance relies upon emergency department chief complaints for early indications of population health events.  […]

According to research published in Health Affairs this week, “there is a substantial risk that many current efforts to promote health information exchange will fail.”

The study was conducted by a group of researchers led by the University of Michigan’s Julia Adler-Milstein,  an assistant professor in the U-M School of Information and School of Public Health. Their survey found that about 30 percent of hospitals and 10 percent of ambulatory practices are now participating in one of the 119 operational HIEs across the country, while 74 percent of HIEs surveyed report long-term funding challenges. Fewer than one in four HIEs responding reported that revenues from exchange participants covered their operating costs. Fewer than half were being financially supported by payers.

In the light of MERS coronavirus and concerns over H7N9 Influenza in South East Asia, researchers at the University of Warwick and University of Liverpool mapped the daily contact networks of thousands of individuals to shed light on which groups may be at highest risk of contracting and spreading respiratory diseases. The scientists used an anonymous web and mail survey of 5,027 UK residents to collect information on the types of social contact likely to lead to the transmission of respiratory infections.