Epidemiological Surveillance

According to the World Health Organization, Public health surveillance is the continuous, systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of health-related data needed for the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice.

Such surveillance can:

• Serve as an early warning system for impending public health emergencies
• Document the impact of an intervention, or track progress towards specified goals
• Monitor and clarify the epidemiology of health problems, to allow priorities to be set and to inform public health policy and strategies.

Epiconcept supports public health partners on multiple components of epidemiological surveillance: surveillance system development and management, data analysis, management of programmes dedicated to the strengthening of communicable disease surveillance (training in epidemiology, laboratory management or IT). Our Epidemiology team can intervene at different stages, including:

• In the upstream design phase: identification of priorities, definition of quantifiable objectives, implementation of systems.
• In the monitoring phase: descriptive analysis, including mapping and GIS (Geographic Information Systems); time series analysis.
• Downstream: evaluation of epidemiological surveillance systems and practical recommendations for their improvement (on request).

This epidemiological expertise can be supplemented by implementing computer components of surveillance systems and by user training.