Snow Disease Surveillance System Study

Communicable Diseases Clinical Trial

— Snow  

Official title:

Snow Disease Surveillance System Study

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT01232686
• Other study ID #: ID 3746/ HST954-10
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• First received: October 15, 2010
• Last updated: February 15, 2017
• Start date: October 2010
• Est. completion date: December 2012

Study information

• Verified date: December 2015
• Source: University Hospital of North Norway
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

The study investigates whether shared online access to epidemiological data for general practitioners, disease prevention officers, emergency care services and microbiology laboratories changes clinical practice with regard to testing, diagnosing and treatment of communicable diseases. The main hypothesis is that "online access for general practitioner to epidemiological data about communicable diseases changes clinical practice for testing, diagnosing and treatment of communicable diseases".

Description:

We will collect data from general practitioners (GP) offices by installing local data extraction solutions. Each installation will build a local anonymous database of GP consultations extracted from the local electronic patient record (EPR) system. These anonymous data records will be used to produce local disease statistics before they are exported to a centralized server available in the Norwegian Health network. The centralized server will produce daily reports about the epidemiological situation in the patient population. We will combine the syndromic data from the GP offices with data from the microbiology laboratories on the hospitals that covers the study areas. The epidemiological data will be made available to the intervention areas in the study through web based and customized client applications.

By using data extracted from the GP offices EPR databases and the microbiology laboratories we will investigate the study hypothesis.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 200
• Est. completion date: December 2012
• Est. primary completion date: December 2012
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: N/A and older

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• Volunteering General Practitioner (GP) working in a GP office

Exclusion Criteria:

• The GP does not use a Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Communicable Diseases
• Infection

Intervention

Other:
• Online disease surveillance data access
In the intervention areas we will give the study participants online access to the Snow disease surveillance system. The system will provide data about the incidents of respiratory and gastrointestinal communicable diseases in the patient population.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
n/a

Sponsors (4)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University Hospital of North Norway	Norwegian Health Network (state owned enterprise), The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Health, University of Tromso

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Earlier diagnosis and treatment for communicable diseases	General practitioners (GP) have three possible decisions in a consultation with a patient; 1) treat on suspicion, 2) take a sample, 3) wait and see whether the patient recovers or get worse, or 4) a combination of 1 and 2.; In situations with decision 3 (wait and see) the patient may return to a consultation later on.; The hypothesis is that online access to epidemiological data from the local patient population will enable GPs to make the right decision more often based on knowledge about the epidemiological situation in the patient population.	Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
Secondary	Earlier detection of local disease outbreaks	Syndromic surveillance enables earlier detection of local disease outbreaks compared to traditional laboratory based surveillance. We will record the time of disease outbreak detection in both intervention and control areas and compare.	Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
Secondary	Lower number of infected during disease outbreaks	We will compare the number of infected in the intervention and control areas. The hypothesis is that the intervention areas will have fewer infected compared to the control areas.	Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
Secondary	Impact on health service costs	We will measure the cost related to communicable diseases in the control and intervention areas. Our prediction is that it will change.	Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)