Disease Surveillance

Disease surveillance is an important aspect of any public health-care programme that serves the following essential purposes:

• For monitoring the progress of ongoing medical interventions for disease reduction

• For early detection of outbreaks to initiate investigative and control measures

• In disease control decisions

  • For the evaluation of the efficacy of surveillance initiatives

  • To provide a scientific basis for implementation of an appropriate health-care policy and the allocation of resources in the primary health-care system

An active surveillance system must be designed to prevent and localize outbreaks, and provide timely and appropriate response where most needed. As our world shrinks with the constant trans-border movement of people, our ability to prevent, detect, respond and contain infectious diseases is key to managing global health.

Mobile technologies can play a critical role in assisting health-care providers in delivering timely medical response to local clusters of disease and in containing the outbreaks.

Mobile technologies such as mobile phones, PDAs, Simputers and Internet Tablets can play a critical role in assisting health-care providers in delivering timely medical response to local clusters of disease outbreak and in containing such outbreaks. A wireless-enabled mobile device provides the ideal platform for collection of data in the field which is accurate, and then for transmitting it to a back-end server for analysis and feedback.