With the novel coronavirus sweeping across continents, epidemiologists are racing to trace and understand the virus. That’s why the field of epidemiology has found itself in the spotlight during the global COVID-19 pandemic. But epidemiologists work every day to confront a variety of health and safety threats, from influenza to Salmonella infection outbreaks.
“Epidemiology is the study of the origin and causes of diseases in a community,” explains the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC).1 Epidemiological surveillance strategies help local health officials, healthcare providers, laboratory scientists, and statisticians “get to the root of health problems and outbreaks in a community.”1
Over the years, the field of epidemiology has expanded to include non-infectious-disease health conditions like depression and obesity. Epidemiological surveillance helps track the incidence (the number of new cases over a period of time) and the prevalence (the number of existing cases) of diseases or disorders in a community.
Tracking diseases in a community is just one half of the equation for epidemiologists. The other half is making recommendations to mitigate disease based on the information gathered. Using surveillance data, along with a deep understanding of local conditions, epidemiologists suggest public health interventions to help reduce—or even prevent—disease in a community.
Such interventions can help lessen the impact of foodborne illness, contagious viral outbreaks, and non-infectious disease health conditions.
The field of epidemiology touches healthcare organizations of every size. Local health systems partner with local health departments to monitor trends. In fact, about 89% of local health departments conduct tracking and epidemiology for infectious diseases.2 On a national level, the US CDC tracks national and global health threats with a mission to “protect the safety, health, and security of America from threats here and around the world.”
The CDC maintains a list of dozens of “notifiable” diseases that must be reported by healthcare providers or pathologists. This notification system can provide an early warning when a disease begins to spread within a community. Notifiable diseases include foodborne illnesses like Salmonella infections, waterborne illnesses like cryptosporidiosis, and contagious diseases like whooping cough or COVID-19.
On a global level, the World Health Organization (WHO) operates in 150 countries to promote health and prevent disease. This global effort can help mitigate disease outbreaks that spread across borders and impact millions of people.
While the CDC and the WHO strive to keep tabs on diseases and disorders, local healthcare providers and health systems can similarly benefit from knowing what pathogens are circulating in the community on a micro level—although gathering that data in a rapid timeframe can be a daunting challenge.
BioFire® Syndromic Trends (Trend) can help make some of that information rapidly accessible. BioFire Trend is a software feature available to labs that use the BioFire® FilmArray® System for infectious disease diagnostics. Data from diagnostic tests run on the BioFire System are de-identified and aggregated with other participating institutions’ test data, enabling institutions to view pathogen trends for their own lab, as well as regional and national trends.
BioFire provides this software feature to BioFire System users as a tracking and reporting tool to help in the fight against infectious disease. BioFire Trend may help hospitals, public health organizations, and epidemiologists spot outbreaks and detect emerging pathogens in a community. More specifically, BioFire Trend can provide valuable information to infectious disease doctors, antimicrobial stewardship committees, infection control committees, and hospital administrators. With early awareness of a pathogen spike in their region, these various stakeholders can prepare to see an uptick at their own institutions.
A recent study indicates that BioFire Trend makes information available sooner, as test results are uploaded to the database within a few hours of completion, compared with a timeframe of up to 10 days for other diagnostic-based reporting systems.3 The study also concluded that “Syndromic Trends will be able to provide high-resolution analysis of circulating respiratory pathogens and may aid in the detection of new outbreaks.”3
BioFire Syndromic Trends gastrointestinal pathogen trends.
BioFire Trend reports data for four syndromic testing panels: the BioFire® FilmArray® Respiratory (RP, RP2) Panels, the BioFire® FilmArray® Gastrointestinal Panel, the BioFire® FilmArray® Blood Culture Identification Panel, and the BioFire® FilmArray® Meningitis/Encephalitis Panel. However, an institution can only access BioFire Trend data for the panels they utilize.
BioFire Trend participants receive automatic, weekly email reports. They can also access an online dashboard where they can explore their institution’s data and download custom reports. BioFire Trend offers participating institutions unlimited licenses to access the clinical website.
Click here to register for BioFire Trend and gain access to infectious disease trends from your institution and your region.
References
The History of Coronaviruses and Humanity