Technology has helped in finding and fighting disease. You'll recall a special camera spotted people who could be suffering from SARS. The camera could detect a person with a high fever at a distance.

Now there is software to automatically help mine data from clinical test results in hospitals, and compare them to symptoms at other hospitals in the region, often before there is a diagnosis. It's a "real time" approach being developed by AMS of Fairfax, Virginia.

"When you move to what is happening you get a time advantage that allows you to be able to contain things," said Dedric Carter of AMS. "Maybe that time advantage is days, maybe it's hours. Maybe it's seconds. In a critical attack, in a critical outbreak, seconds, minutes are things that can make a difference in the lives of individuals."

Close your eyes and imagine doctors at 5 different hospitals waiting for test results on 3 new patients in each emergency room. They're probably worried about their own patients, not comparing notes with physicians at other hospitals – yet.

The new AMS system would already be looking at test results at each hospital, making comparisons, and a probable diagnosis. The system could alert hospital staff and health officials if something major were detected. While looking for major outbreaks and signs of bioterrorism, the system could help rule them out – saving time, money and resources.

"Knowing what I have and what I don't have are really important things in containing an outbreak. And making sure that you deploy critical resources to the areas that have the most need, as opposed to sort of distributing them to areas that have false positives," said Carter.

Emergency Notification

Deploying resources requires an emergency notification system. Advanced Continuity of Falls Church, VA has developed a web-based system called Floodgate. It permits notification of responders through phone, pager, blackberry or email. And it's not just pushing out information, because it requires an acknowledgement, and keeps track of who has responded and who hasn't.

While some military units are using it, it also could be useful for public health officials or first responders. Advanced Continuity's J.J. Nathan says Floodgate is "ideally suited for just about anybody that has a mass notification need when the notification has to, and the message has to get out there."

Nathan says Floodgate is scalable, meaning it could be used by anyone who is serious about notification, including a physician who is urging elderly patients to get a flu shot and wants confirmation her patients got the message.

Making it work

Data mining software is a great surveillance tool, but standards are necessary so data collected with different systems can be translated into that standard. That way, clinical results, and possible outbreaks could more easily be reported and displayed geographically for public health and other officials.