Surveillance Informatics in Resource Limited Settings

Resource limited nations often lack health information and communications technology (ICT) to develop or augment disease surveillance systems. In addition, insufficient human resources add burden to establishing and managing the much needed reliable electronic disease surveillance systems to control the spread of infectious diseases.  In many nations, there is urgency for establishing national electronic disease surveillance systems; capable of not only collecting reliable data but allow health workers to analyze data for public health action at the community level. Developing such reliable systems require interoperable standards for data exchange at various levels of national health systems. This presentation will illustrate examples of surveillance systems from three regions of the world. It will discuss the challenges in implementing standards and the current approaches to overcoming those challenges.