Problem Identification, Definition, Justification
The most important component for effective disease surveillance is timely information regarding disease occurrence. Nowadays, with available information technology, people as well as information can be easily connected with no boundary. Information of disease occurrence can come from public sources, in addition to the national routine surveillance system. Data on disease occurrence can be obtained via social media or search engine such as from Google search, Twitter, or Facebook. Public reporting systems that may be more specific than social media include ProMED-mail and HealthMap. Information from these public-reporting systems is potentially valuable for health emergency response and preparedness, since these data may be reported at the very early stage of outbreak. However, the validity of information from such public reporting system is the main concern. Although previous studies have shown a good correlation between public reporting data and data from national reporting system in many areas mostly in America and Europe continents, the results may not be generalized to places with different contexts.
In Greater Mekong subregion six countries including Cambodia, China (Yunnan and Guangxi provinces), Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam data on cross-border disease occurrence are usually shared through the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance (MBDS), operated by the MBDS Foundation. The main purpose of the MBDS is to monitor disease outbreaks and contain or prevent significant spread of outbreaks through all neighboring countries. The timeliness of disease detection and reporting systems is crucial to stopping outbreaks both within and across countries. Therefore MBDS proposes to measure the time to disease detection for all outbreaks of priority diseases in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam using data from national surveillance systems, MBDS cross-border (XB) systems, and public reporting systems ProMED-mail and HealthMap from 2010 to 2014. This measurement will establish a 5-year baseline of data that MBDS can use to measure progress in finding outbreaks faster.
Public reporting data has not been effectively integrated into MBDS systems and little is known about relevance between public reporting data and national surveillance or XB data. All outbreaks for priority diseases will be obtained first from national surveillance and XB systems and the timeline for each outbreak will be established, including date of outbreak start, outbreak detection, laboratory confirmation, public health response, and public communication about the outbreak. ProMED-mail and HealthMap data for each country from 2010-2014 will be compared to national and XB data and matched for outbreaks identified by more than one system. Dates of report to public reporting systems will be compared to national and XB systems to determine