Citation

Reis BY, Kirby C, Hadden LE, Olson K, McMurry AJ, Daniel JB, Mandl KD. J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc. 2007; 14(5): 581-588.

Affiliation

Children's Hospital Informatics Program at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA. reis@mit.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, American Medical Informatics Association, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1197/jamia.M2342

PMID

17600100

PMCID

PMC1975800

Abstract

In this report, we describe the Automated Epidemiological Geotemporal Integrated Surveillance system (AEGIS), developed for real-time population health monitoring in the state of Massachusetts. AEGIS provides public health personnel with automated near-real-time situational awareness of utilization patterns at participating healthcare institutions, supporting surveillance of bioterrorism and naturally occurring outbreaks. As real-time public health surveillance systems become integrated into regional and national surveillance initiatives, the challenges of scalability, robustness, and data security become increasingly prominent. A modular and fault tolerant design helps AEGIS achieve scalability and robustness, while a distributed storage model with local autonomy helps to minimize risk of unauthorized disclosure. The report includes a description of the evolution of the design over time in response to the challenges of a regional and national integration environment.

Language: en