The organization uses a large multidisciplinary group of people and organizations to obtain data. Bruce also summarized the strengths and weaknesses of various types of monitoring and described what information can be gained with each type. He indicated that national studies were good for addressing major or chronic problems, whereas ongoing monitoring might be more valuable in identifying emerging diseases. Because it is a voluntary system, capturing data and reporting from individual laboratories are difficult. Disease diagnoses have not been standardized.
Some groups are selective about the diseases that are monitored.
Obtaining diagnostic lab reports is difficult because it is unclear who has control of the information.