The American journal of emergency medicine
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
A test of syndromic surveillance using a severe acute respiratory syndrome model.
We describe a field simulation that was conducted using volunteers to assess the ability of 3 hospitals in a network to manage a large influx of patients with a potentially communicable disease. This drill provided the opportunity to evaluate the ability of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's (NYC-DOHMH) emergency department chief complaint syndromic surveillance system to detect a cluster of patients with febrile respiratory illness. ⋯ This drill with a cluster of patients with febrile respiratory illness failed to trigger a signal from the NYC-DOHMH emergency department chief complaint syndromic surveillance system. This highlighted several limitations and challenges to syndromic surveillance monitoring.