A New Perspective on Infection Surveillance: Context-Based Syndromic Surveillance

As winter approaches, so does a common enemy: flu season.

Each year, forecasts are distributed by central reporting agencies to healthcare institutions, providing information about what can be expected from the upcoming flu season, including estimates about onset, duration, and severity.

But what if infection prevention teams had the ability to combine the proven effectiveness of syndromic surveillance with their individual, community-based data? The result is what we call context-based syndromic surveillance (CBSS).