A System for Surveillance Directly from the EMR

Abstract

This paper describes a system for detection of nosocomial infections in a large multi-location institution. The system monitors multiple data streams, containing discrete and text based information, combines it intelligently in order to be able to process complex syndrome definitions. It produces bed-day level alerts which are pushed to the respective location automatically. This helps in standardizing definitions for hospital acquired infections across institutions and allows to compare the infection statistics across institutions.