From hospitalization records to surveillance: The use of local patient profiles to characterize cholera in Vellore, India.

ABSTRACT: Despite availability of high quality medical records, health care systems often do not have the resources or tools to utilize these data efficiently. Yet, hospital-based, laboratory-confirmed records may pave the way for building reliable surveillance systems capable of monitoring temporal trends of emerging infections. In this communication, we present a new tool to compress and visualize medical records with a local population profile (LPP) approach, which transforms information into statistically comparable patterns. We provide a step-by-step tutorial on how to build, interpret, and expand the use of LPP using hospitalization records of laboratory-confirmed cholera. We abstracted case information from the databases maintained by the Department of Clinical Microbiology at Christian Medic

SUBMITTER: Cruz MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5562306 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature