The surveillance of infectious diseases
S. B. Thacker, K. Choi and P. S. Brachman
Surveillance is the collection, collation, and analysis of data and the
dissemination to those who need to know so that an action can result. This
article describes the clinician's critical role in disease reporting and
outlines the benefits of surveillance to clinical practice. Four commonly
used systems of disease surveillance are notifiable disease reporting,
laboratory-based surveillance, hospital-based surveillance, and
population-based surveillance. We analyze the relative strengths and
limitations of each of these systems and present current efforts to
evaluate and improve surveillance activities.
