Taiwan has very high population density (Taiwan, 632.23 persons/km 2 ; Taipei, 9662.53 persons/km 2 ), which increases the spread of many human-to-human infectious diseases [19] . This makes the surveillance of infectious diseases very important for this island. Taiwan's ED-SSS is the first syndromic surveillance system to be implemented in Asia. It also represents the first time that Taiwan's public health agencies have attempted active nationwide surveillance. Its automatic data collection mechanism is capable of capturing comprehensive population-based health information and providing important details on current disease epidemics at the community level. The information it provides can also be used as community baseline data for further infectious disease modeling and can also improve the detection of emerging infectious diseases.