Adela Vasili1, Kujtim Mersini2, Jonilda Sulo2, Dritan Çela3, Agron Bashllari4, Anila Moci5, Silva Bino1
1Institute of Public Health, Surveillance and Control of Infectious Diseases, Tirana, Albania.
2South East European Centre for Disease Surveillance and Control, Tirana, Albania, Tirana, Albania.
3ArkIT, Tirana/AL
4Public Health Department, Vlore, Albania.
5Public Health Departement, Fier, Albania.
Aim: The objective of this paper is to showcase how public health surveillance can be improved by interrelating case based surveillance, laboratory surveillance, syndromic surveillance and event based surveillance into an integrated electronic Infectious Diseases Information System (IDIS).
Methods:Development of IDIS began in December 2016 with the goal to modernize the Albanian surveillance system by developing a user-friendly, comprehensive database for case, contact, and laboratory data and focusing on the improvement of the timeliness indicators of disease detection and responding. The system development is based on expertise of a number of experts including epidemiologist, public health, veterinary, entomology, laboratory, immunologists and information technology engineers. The platform is based on open-sourcesoftware solutionsand currently is available in two languages in Albanian and English but it has the potential to be translated onto more languages.
Results:Features of the current IDIS Application are: (i) integration of information from different surveillance systems indicator, syndromic and event base; (ii) better investigation and management of outbreaks and reduce data-entry errors (iii) assist the epidemiologists with the generation ofline listing and or contact-tracing lists to ensure appropriate follow-up of cases; (iv) integration with the national vaccination registry for retrieving vaccination history and prospectively apply ring vaccinations during outbreak control; (v) automate and simplify the analysis needed for epidemiological reports; (vi) knowledge repository with a qualitative and quantitative cache of epidemiological information and data; and (vii) improve the consistency, communication, and effective use of public health data. In the near future is planned to be developed a one health dashboard which will serve as an integrated surveillance data portal for all involved actors in public health.
Conclusions:IDIS provides a capacity to improve the Albanian disease surveillance system and holds a lot of potential for future integration with veterinary, vector and food safety sector by rapidly collecting and analyzing data on infectious diseases, hosts and vectors. Particular methods which are being developed within IDIS provide an array of instruments to epidemiologists to perform faster and qualitatively data collection, make better decisions and more effectively plan response measures. Keywords:communicable diseases, COVID-19,digital information system, pandemic, web-based.