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Activity Number:
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146
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Type:
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Contributed
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Date/Time:
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Monday, August 7, 2006 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
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Sponsor:
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Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
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| Abstract - #307163 |
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Title:
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Disease Outbreak Surveillance: Using Prescription Data as a Proxy Source for Detection
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Author(s):
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A. Elizabeth Allen*+ and Kennon Copeland
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Companies:
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IMS Health and IMS Health
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Address:
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660 W. Germantown Pike, Plymouth Meeting, PA, 19462,
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Keywords:
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disease ; outbreak ; prescription ; data
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Abstract:
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Geographic patterns of diseases are of critical interest for public health monitoring and policy. However, information used to estimate disease patterns is generally limited, either in terms of geographic or population coverage. By contrast, availability of information on pharmaceutical drug dispensing is very comprehensive. Pharmaceutical drug information has been found to allow a broader sense of potential disease outbreaks as it is more timely and provides higher coverage than physician reported data. In a prior study, Copeland and Allen (2005) showed Tamiflu prescription data evidenced similar outbreak trends as influenza-like-illness reported by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) at both national and regional levels. Further analysis here looks at more sensitive local outbreak detection methods, as well as incorporating daily prescription estimates for more timely detection.
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