The
core surveillance tool for GeoSentinel Sites is a single
page faxable form submitted to a central data site for each
post-travel
visit. All patients are included who have visited the
clinic post travel and have crossed international boundaries. Patients
include tourists, immigrants, refugees, expatriates, students
and foreign visitors. Diagnoses are entered either
as specific etiologies or as syndromes, and are then linked
to geographic
locations, reference dates, and clinical presentations. In
addition, electronic communication with the larger constituency
of GeoSentinel Network Members or of world wide ISTM member
clinics is occasionally done to obtain broader data collection
in response
to specific inquiries. Temporal trends for travel-related
infectious diseases are monitored. Month by month baseline
data for common
travel-related diagnoses in the patient population have now
been established. Deviations from established patterns
for syndromic diagnoses could herald a novel pathogen. Increased
rates for etiologic diagnoses could signal the emergence
of new epidemics or new foci of disease.
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Options for data submissions:
Various
options are available for sites to participate in sending data
to the central data location.
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A web
based data entry system is the primary mode
of data submission. The data collection system
is housed on a secure Internet-based system that is
protected by the Secure Data Network (SDN) firewall
at CDC. Sites access the system using random
numbers generated by portable SecurID devices and a
combination
of user logins and passwords. The data resides
on a SQL Server Database 2000 and the GeoSentinel application
runs on an Internet Information
Server 5.0 (IIS) web server on a Windows 2000 Server. All
sites have the ability to enter or update their patient
records
online,
download
their
own site-specific data in MS-ACCESS, run canned reports
and query their own data in real time.
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Sites
may choose to fill out a one
page surveillance form and fax it to the data
site.
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In
some circumstances, sites
with existing electronic medical records may choose to add the
GeoSentinel data fields to their existing systems,
extract the required
GeoSentinel data on
a regular basis, and email the data.
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© 2005
GeoSentinel. All rights reserved.