Open data in public health surveillance systems: A case study using the French Sentinelles network

International Journal of Medical Informatics

Volumn 82, Issue 10, 2013, Pages 1012-1021

  Turbelin, Clément ^a,b   Boëlle, Pierre Yves ^a,b,c  

^a SORBONNE UNIVERSITÉ   (France)

^b INSERM   (France)

^c HÔPITAL SAINT ANTOINE   (France)

Author keywords

Data sharing; Epidemiology; Public health; Standards

Indexed keywords

COMMUNICABLE DISEASE; DATA SHARING; END-USER PERSPECTIVE; GENERAL POPULATION; GOVERNMENT AGENCIES; PUBLIC HEALTH SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS; PUBLIC HEALTH SURVEILLANCES; STATISTICAL DATAS;

COMPLEX NETWORKS; DISEASES; EPIDEMIOLOGY; INTERNET; INTEROPERABILITY; NETWORK SECURITY; PUBLIC HEALTH; REUSABILITY; STANDARDS; TOOLS;

POPULATION STATISTICS;

ACCESS TO INFORMATION; ARTICLE; GENERAL PRACTITIONER; GOVERNMENT; HEALTH SURVEY; INTERNET; MEDICAL DOCUMENTATION; MEDICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM; PRIORITY JOURNAL; PUBLIC HEALTH; CASE CONTROL STUDY; ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORD; FRANCE; INFORMATION DISSEMINATION; MEANINGFUL USE CRITERIA; MEDICAL INFORMATICS; MEDICAL RECORD; ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT; PROCEDURES;

ACCESS TO INFORMATION; CASE-CONTROL STUDIES; ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS; FRANCE; INFORMATION DISSEMINATION; INTERNET; MEANINGFUL USE; MEDICAL RECORD LINKAGE; PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATICS; PUBLIC HEALTH SURVEILLANCE;

EID: 84887405539     PISSN: 13865056     EISSN: 18728243     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2013.06.009     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Bravata D.M., McDonald K.M., Smith W.M., Rydzak C., Szeto H., Buckeridge D.L., et al. Systematic review: surveillance systems for early detection of bioterrorism-related diseases. Ann. Intern. Med. 2004 Jun 1, 140(11):910-922.
2. Ginsberg J., Mohebbi M.H., Patel R.S., Brammer L., Smolinski M.S., Brilliant L. Detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data. Nature 2009, 457(February (7232)):1012-1014.
3. Pelat C., Turbelin C., Bar-Hen A., Flahault A., Valleron A. More diseases tracked by using Google trends. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 2009, 15(August (8)):1327-1328.
4. Signorini A., Segre A.M., Polgreen P.M. The use of Twitter to track levels of disease activity and public concern in the US during the influenza A H1N1 pandemic. PLoS ONE 2011, 6(5):e19467.
5. Freifeld C.C., Mandl K.D., Reis B.Y., Brownstein J.S. HealthMap: global infectious disease monitoring through automated classification and visualization of Internet media reports. J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc. 2008, 15(March-April (2)):150-157.
6. Collier N., Doan S., Kawazoe A., Goodwin R.M., Conway M., Tateno Y., et al. BioCaster: detecting public health rumors with a Web-based text mining system. Bioinformatics 2008, 24(December (24)):2940-2941.
7. Estallo E.L., Luduena-Almeida F.F., Visintin A.M., Scavuzzo C.M., Introini M.V., Zaidenberg M., et al. Prevention of dengue outbreaks through Aedes aegypti oviposition activity forecasting method. Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis. 2011, 11(May (5)):543-549.
8. Estallo E.L., Lamfri M.A., Scavuzzo C.M., Almeida F.F., Introini M.V., Zaidenberg M., et al. Models for predicting Aedes aegypti larval indices based on satellite images and climatic variables. J. Am. Mosq. Control Assoc. 2008, 24(September (3)):368-376.
9. Karolak S., Nefau T., Bailly E., Solgadi A., Levi Y. Estimation of illicit drugs consumption by wastewater analysis in Paris area (France). Forensic Sci Int. 2010, 200(July (1-3)):153-160.
10. Barrett T., Troup D.B., Wilhite S.E., Ledoux P., Evangelista C., Kim I.F., et al. NCBI GEO: archive for functional genomics data sets - 10 years on. Nucleic Acids Res. 2011, 39(January (database issue)):D1005-D1010.
11. Opening up government. Available from: (Accessed 16.10.11). http://data.gov.uk/.
12. Pisani E., AbouZahr C. Sharing health data: good intentions are not enough. Bull World Health Organ. 2010, 88(June (6)):462-466.
13. Walport M., Brest P. Sharing research data to improve public health. Lancet 2011, 377(February (9765)):537-539.
14. Orlova A.O., Dunnagan M., Finitzo T., Higgins M., Watkins T., Tien A., et al. Electronic health record - public health (EHR-PH) system prototype for interoperability in 21st century healthcare systems. AMIA Annu. Symp. Proc. 2005, 57:5-9.
15. Standardization IOf. ISO/IEC 11179-1 Metadata registries, Part 1-Framework. 2004.
16. Taylor C.F., Field D., Sansone S.A., Aerts J., Apweiler R., Ashburner M., et al. Promoting coherent minimum reporting guidelines for biological and biomedical investigations: the MIBBI project. Nat. Biotechnol. 2008, 26(August (8)):889-896.
17. Mamlin B.W., Biondich P.G., Wolfe B.A., Fraser H., Jazayeri D., Allen C., et al. Cooking up an open source EMR for developing countries: OpenMRS - a recipe for successful collaboration. AMIA Annu. Symp. Proc. 2006, 52:9-33.
18. Tsui F.C., Espino J.U., Dato V.M., Gesteland P.H., Hutman J., Wagner M.M. Technical description of RODS: a real-time public health surveillance system. J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc. 2003, 10(September-October (5)):399-408.
19. Open Data Protocol 2012, Microsoft, Available from: http://www.odata.org/.
20. Google. Google Data Protocol.
21. SDMX-HD (Health Domain). Available from: http://www.sdmx-hd.org/.
22. Gallagher J., Potter N., Sgouros T., Hankin S., Flierl G. The Data Access Protocol - DAP 2.0 2007, NASA, Available from: http://www.opendap.org/pdf/ESE-RFC-004v1.2.pdf.
23. Unidata Network Common Data Form (netCDF). Available from: (Accessed 09.11.11). http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/.
24. Google DSPL: Dataset Publishing Language 2012, Available from: https://developers.google.com/public-data/ (Accessed 29.12.12).
25. Data Documentation Initiative (DDI). Available from: http://www.ddialliance.org/.
26. Dolin R.H., Alschuler L., Boyer S., Beebe C., Behlen F.M., Biron P.V., et al. HL7 clinical document architecture, Release 2. J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc. 2006, 13(January-February (1)):30-39.
27. CDISC. Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium. Available from: (Cited 08.09.12). http://www.cdisc.org/.
28. Flahault A., Blanchon T., Dorleans Y., Toubiana L., Vibert J.F., Valleron A.J. Virtual surveillance of communicable diseases: a 20-year experience in France. Stat. Methods Med. Res. 2006, 15(October (5)):413-421.
29. Turbelin C., Boelle P.Y. Improving general practice based epidemiologic surveillance using desktop clients: the French Sentinel Network experience. Stud. Health Technol. Inform. 2010, 160(Pt 1):442-446.
30. SDMX Section 02 Information Model: UML Conceptual Design. SDMX.org 2005, Available from: http://sdmx.org/docs/2_0/SDMX_2_0%20SECTION_02_InformationModel.pdf (22.11.12).
31. SDMX SDMX Content Oriented Guidelines, SDMX.org 2009, Available from: http://sdmx.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/00_sdmx_content-oriented_guidelines_2009.pdf.
32. Entity Data Model Net 4 Framework. Microsorft Corp Available from:, (17.10.11). http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee382825.aspx.
33. Schematron (ISO/IEC 19757-3:2006 Rule-based validation). International Organization for Standardization, 2006. Available from: http://www.schematron.com/.
34. EuroStat SDMX Resource website. EuroStat Available from:. https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/sdmx/.
35. Entity Data Model for Data Services Packaging Format. Microsoft Corp. Available from: 2012 (updated 08.02.12; cited 08.02.2012). http://www.odata.org/media/16343/%5Bmc-edmx%5D.pdf.
36. XML schema specifications. Available from: http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema.
37. EASY-R an SDMX based timeseries repository. SDMX Global Conference 2011, O. Lorenz (Ed.).
38. SDMX Content oriented guidelines, Annex 1, Cross-Domain Concepts 2009, Available from: http://sdmx.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/01_sdmx_cog_annex_1_cdc_2009.pdf.
39. W3C Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1. W3C 2007, Available from: http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl (17.10.2011).
40. Molloy J.C. The open knowledge foundation: open data means better science. PLoS Biol. 2011, 9(December (12)):e1001195.
41. Dealing with data. Challenges and opportunities. Introduction. Science 2011, 331(February (6018)):692-693.
42. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Available from: ([12.03.12). http://dublincore.org/specifications/.
43. SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System. W3C. Available from: (10.03.12). http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/.
44. Tenopir C., Allard S., Douglass K., Aydinoglu A.U., Wu L., Read E., et al. Data sharing by scientists: practices and perceptions. PLoS ONE 2011, 6(6):e21101.