Real-time Prescription Surveillance and its Application to Monitoring Seasonal Influenza Activity in Japan
Tamie Sugawara,Yasushi Ohkusa,Yoko Ibuka,Hirokazu Kawanohara,Kiyosu Taniguchi,Nobuhiko Okabe +5 more
TLDR
The estimated number of influenza cases was highly correlated with that predicted by the official sentinel surveillance, indicating that the prescription surveillance system presents great potential for monitoring influenza activity and for providing early detection of infectious disease outbreaks.Abstract:
Background: Real-time surveillance is fundamental for effective control of disease outbreaks, but the official sentinel surveillance in Japan collects information related to disease activity only weekly and updates it with a 1-week time lag. Objective: To report on a prescription surveillance system using electronic records related to prescription drugs that was started in 2008 in Japan, and to evaluate the surveillance system for monitoring influenza activity during the 2009–2010 and 2010–2011 influenza seasons. Methods: We developed an automatic surveillance system using electronic records of prescription drug purchases collected from 5275 pharmacies through the application service provider’s medical claims service. We then applied the system to monitoring influenza activity during the 2009–2010 and 2010–2011 influenza seasons. The surveillance system collected information related to drugs and patients directly and automatically from the electronic prescription record system, and estimated the number of influenza cases based on the number of prescriptions of anti-influenza virus medication. Then it shared the information related to influenza activity through the Internet with the public on a daily basis. Results: During the 2009–2010 influenza season, the number of influenza patients estimated by the prescription surveillance system between the 28th week of 2009 and the 12th week of 2010 was 9,234,289. In the 2010–2011 influenza season, the number of influenza patients between the 36th week of 2010 and the 12th week of 2011 was 7,153,437. The estimated number of influenza cases was highly correlated with that predicted by the official sentinel surveillance (r = .992, P < .001 for 2009–2010; r = .972, P < .001 for 2010–2011), indicating that the prescription surveillance system produced a good approximation of activity patterns. Conclusions: Our prescription surveillance system presents great potential for monitoring influenza activity and for providing early detection of infectious disease outbreaks. [J Med Internet Res 2012;14(1):e14]read more
Citations
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Enhancing Seasonal Influenza Surveillance: Topic Analysis of Widely Used Medicinal Drugs Using Twitter Data
TL;DR: The study results showed the feasibility of using tweets of widely consumed drugs to enhance seasonal influenza surveillance in lieu of the traditional or conventional surveillance approaches and can be extended to the outbreaks of other diseases.
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Comparison: Flu Prescription Sales Data from a Retail Pharmacy in the US with Google Flu Trends and US ILINet (CDC) Data as Flu Activity Indicator
TL;DR: This study compared prescription sales data from a large drug retailing pharmacy chain in the United States with Google Flu trends surveillance system data as a flu activity indicator and found that the two were highly correlated.
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Drug sales data analysis for outbreak detection of infectious diseases: a systematic literature review.
Mathilde Pivette,Mathilde Pivette,Judith E. Mueller,Judith E. Mueller,Pascal Crépey,Pascal Crépey,Avner Bar-Hen +6 more
TL;DR: Drug sales data analyses appear to be a useful tool for surveillance of gastrointestinal and respiratory disease, and OTC drugs have the potential for early outbreak detection.
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Evaluation of estimated number of influenza patients from national sentinel surveillance using the national database of electronic medical claims.
Yuuki Nakamura,Tamie Sugawara,Hirokazu Kawanohara,Yasushi Ohkusa,Miwako Kamei,Kazunori Oishi +5 more
TL;DR: The estimated number of patients from NOSSID might not be precise, but it may be useful to monitor influenza trends and the estimated number from the PS was almost equivalent to that from the NDBEMC.
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A New Influenza-Tracking Smartphone App (Flu-Report) Based on a Self-Administered Questionnaire: Cross-Sectional Study.
Kazutoshi Fujibayashi,Hiromizu Takahashi,Mika Tanei,Yuki Uehara,Hirohide Yokokawa,Toshio Naito +5 more
TL;DR: Evaluating the flu-tracking ability of Flu-Report, a new influenza-tracking mobile phone app that uses a self-administered questionnaire for the early detection of influenza activity, found that it has the potential to provide basic data that could help detect influenza outbreaks.
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