Clinical trial NCT01232686: Snow Disease Surveillance System Study
Official title: Snow Disease Surveillance System Study
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Communicable Diseases
Keywords: Communicable Diseases
Epidemiology
Population surveillance
Computerized Medical Record
Data collection
Lead sponsor: University Hospital of North Norway
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: University of Tromso
name: The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Health
name: Norwegian Health Network (state owned enterprise)
First posted: 2010-11-02
Enrollment: 200
Sex: ALL
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: NON_RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Brief summary: The study investigates whether shared online access to epidemiological data for general practitioners, disease prevention officers, emergency care services and microbiology laboratories changes clinical practice with regard to testing, diagnosing and treatment of communicable diseases. The main hypothesis is that "online access for general practitioner to epidemiological data about communicable diseases changes clinical practice for testing, diagnosing and treatment of communicable diseases".

Detailed description: We will collect data from general practitioners (GP) offices by installing local data extraction solutions. Each installation will build a local anonymous database of GP consultations extracted from the local electronic patient record (EPR) system. These anonymous data records will be used to produce local disease statistics before they are exported to a centralized server available in the Norwegian Health network. The centralized server will produce daily reports about the epidemiological situation in the patient population. We will combine the syndromic data from the GP offices with data from the microbiology laboratories on the hospitals that covers the study areas. The epidemiological data will be made available to the intervention areas in the study through web based and customized client applications.

By using data extracted from the GP offices EPR databases and the microbiology laboratories we will investigate the study hypothesis.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Volunteering General Practitioner (GP) working in a GP office

Exclusion Criteria:

* The GP does not use a Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system

Primary outcomes:
measure: Earlier diagnosis and treatment for communicable diseases
timeFrame: Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Earlier detection of local disease outbreaks
timeFrame: Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
measure: Lower number of infected during disease outbreaks
timeFrame: Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
measure: Impact on health service costs
timeFrame: Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
Other outcomes:
Locations:
Study officials:
affiliation: University of Tromsø, Department of Computer Science
name: Johan Gustav Bellika, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: