MOUNT VERNON — In the hospital setting, data about flu-like symptoms is collected in the emergency room. The RODS project — Real Time Outbreak and Disease Surveillance — provides software that monitors clinical data and data about the sale of over-the-counter medications, as well as other data. Epidemiologist Vaughn Anderson said over 90 hospitals use RODS statewide. The Center for Disease Control has been using RODS nationally since 1999.
“It all stems from a food borne outbreak in Michigan,” explained Anderson. “They saw a huge increase in anti-diarrheals just prior to confirmation of the outbreak.”
RODS can track symptoms of flu, respiratory illnesses, diarrhea and skin rashes, as well as neurologic and gastrointestinal symptoms. It can also be linked to track over-the-counter medications, which, said Anderson, is difficult because there are so many being sold.
“[But] you’ve got to be careful with the data,” said Anderson. “You’ve got to make sure there’s no anomaly with the data.”
For example, he said, there may be an increase in cough medicine reported, but it may just be a case of a particular pharmacy having a sale on the medicine.
“The first thing with public health is to confirm a diagnosis or outbreak,” he said. “RODS is syndromic, or early event, surveillance of a nonconfirmed disease before it becomes an outbreak.
“It’s not highly accurate, but again, it gives us an indication of potential problems to investigate.”
Anderson said he hopes to have the capability to track OTC medications next year.
According to Anderson, the information collected through RODS is anonymous in terms of patient identification. Data can be sorted by hospital location or by home location, through zip code. The advantage of sorting by zip code is that if a patient went to another hospital, such as Grady Memorial in Delaware or Children’s Hospital in Columbus, the information can be related back to Knox County. This helps health officials track the location or source of a possible outbreak.
According to Anderson, a spike in hospital admissions from a neighborhood, or notification that something is unusual by RODS standards, could simply indicate the presence of a flu bug, or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, it could mean a chemical or biological weapon has been released.
RODS was implemented in Utah in 2002 for the Olympic Winter Games, held Feb. 8 to March 16, 2002. In the wake of 9/11, and the anthrax releases in October 2001, health officials felt the need for bioterrorism surveillance during the Games. According to an article which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Information Association in 2003, over 114,000 acute care encounters between Feb. 8 and March 16, but no outbreaks of public health significance were detected.
Anderson said there is about eight months of data entered thus far for Knox County in RODS.
