This Disease Surveillance webinar featured an introduction to the design, implementation and use of WHO-approved configuration packages for integrated disease surveillance & response (IDSR) and case-based surveillance for vaccine preventable diseases like polio, measles and meningitis. DHIS2 experts explained key functionalities, implementation considerations and lessons learned from countries.
The webinar recording is now available on the DHIS2 YouTube channel and the presentation can be downloaded here
You can add all the questions you may have or post your comments in this thread.
In an outbreak of cholera, not all of the cases will be confirmed through lab test. So I think in the data entry, the confirmed (Epi linked) cases can be more than the samples processed… isn’t it? please elaborate on this point
Yes those are just a warning (the data is still saved), and you can modify those rules if you need to. Note the example shown was comparing suspected cases with confirmed cases, not samples processed.
Are there any plans to offer more flexibility in the periods in analytics, most importantly to enable relative periods for epi weeks? The lack of relative weeks other than standard weeks is a challenge here in Laos, where IBS is based on epi weeks - as it is in many other countries, regardless of whether aggregate or tracker data models are used.
More generally, offering completely configurable relative periods in DHIS2 rather than the current limited set of periods would be a great improvement: not just for the period type, but also the number of relative periods which currently cannot be defined by the user (for weeks, current options are only past week / last 4 / last 12 / last 52, but more flexibility is needed).
Thanks for the reply; I understand it but think these can be confusing particularly if the outbreak is well established… may be we specify lab-confirmed cases from confirmed cases !!
The CBS module, can we generate customized line list for different levels of health system usage? I.e. de-identified data for epi analysis at national level, identifier included data for districts and facilities usage in contact tracing and investigation?
I am interested in the implementation of aggregate system. Yet, MoH requires a follow up tool of those violations to the thresholds of the validation rules.
Is there a way to followup and flag cases in one area and one disease and also to comment and close those items when Rapid Response teams comfirms.
This will provide an interface for the follow up and marking of critical and non-critical items including the action done.
On the case-based surveillance module in tracker, is it possible to lookup the lab samples submitted - or do you need to find the number and type it in. Similarly, to help with work flow is it possible to print a specimen id on a barcode that can be attached to the specimen to facilitate further processing?
Where do you store case definitions for each disease? Are they additional metadata stored with data elements. Is there a way that users can visualize the case definitions when they are entering the data?
Isn’t your use of the acronym “IDSR” exclusively for the aggregate package a bit misleading, given that IDSR is all about integrating not only the case surveillance and diagnostics (laboratory) data, but also surveillance and response?
What you call CBS (not to be confused with community-based surveillance) is just as much an IDSR data capture system - if not more so that the aggregate systems, given that it actually links clinical case reports with laboratory confirmation and maybe even follow-up actions in terms of response.
You may want to revise your terminology so as not to oppose IDSR vs. CBS and avoid any further confusion, even if historically IDSR in AFRO has indeed been aggregate (this will change, as more countries will move to case-based surveillance).
Yes you could potentially create a custom form in tracker for this purpose, just note this would have significant maintenance overhead and custom forms are not supported in Android.
If you use the custom forms for setting up the IDSR weekly reporting system, do the translation features still work? There are still some countries that require bi-lingual versions (e.g. French and English).
Hi Randy, if you use custom forms, then you would need to add the translations directly to the custom forms. The in-built translation features would not work correctly unfortunately. It is something we are trying to address.
Could you clarify what you mean here? Filtering events with a certain lab sample? Wanting to see all events that have submitted a lab sample?
The android app could read the barcode to search for the sample ID, to generate the barcode from an ID within DHIS2 you would need something custom; though it is possible