Ambulance call taking and dispatch data: new approaches to population-based infectious disease surveillance and triage

In Australia, traditional strategies for infectious disease surveillance are based on data reported from Emergency Departments and General Practice and Locum Services. To date, little attention has been paid to the potential utility of emergency prehospital call taking and dispatch data to contribute to infectious disease surveillance. In early 2006, a collaborative national and international team led by the Australian Centre for Pre-hospital Research, commenced a national study of paramedics and their partners to examine the perceptions and expectations of these groups to working and living in pandemic conditions and to examine the utility of ambulance call taking and dispatch data to inform population-based models for surveillance and triage. Using data secured from the Melbourne Ambulance Service and the Queensland Ambulance Service, researchers mapped the ability of these data to mirror data provided by the Victorian Infectious Disease Reference Laboratory on influenza-like illness (ILI). The results demonstrate the potential utility of using emergency prehospital data to complement existing infectious disease surveillance systems. In addition, these results provide a platform for the development and testing of a model of syndromic surveillance at the point of call-taking. The results from this study will be described and the importance of emergency prehospital data to public health applications will be demonstrated