Notice to Readers
Revising CDC's Guidelines for Evaluating Surveillance Systems
A surveillance system provides for the ongoing collection,
analysis,
and dissemination of data to prevent and control disease. Because
all
surveillance systems should be assessed periodically for their
purpose and
usefulness, in 1988, CDC published Guidelines for Evaluating
Surveillance
Systems (1). Recent developments in the electronic exchange of
health data
(2,3), the establishment of data collection standards (2,4), and
interest
in the integration of health information and surveillance systems
(4,5)
have resulted in the need to revise CDC's guidelines.
The guidelines will be revised by a working group under the
direction
of CDC's Surveillance Coordination Group, comprising
representatives from
each of the program areas at CDC and ATSDR and from state
organizations
that collaborate with CDC. Because the surveillance systems at CDC
and
ATSDR are implemented in collaboration with state and local
prevention
partners, these groups will be included in the development of
revised
guidelines.
Comments on the revision of the guidelines should be submitted
by
December 1999 by e-mail to revguide@cdc.gov or by mail to
Attention:
Revised Guidelines, Epidemiology Program Office, CDC, Mailstop
C-08, 1600
Clifton Road, N.E., Atlanta, GA, 30333.
References
CDC. Guidelines for evaluating surveillance systems. MMWR
1988;37(no.
SS-5).
Harman J. Topics for our times: new health care data -- new
horizons
for public health. Am J Public Health 1998;88:1019-21.
Duke University Medical Center. Health Level Seven (HL7)
application
protocol, Medical Center Information Systems, version 3.0.
Durham,
North Carolina: Duke University Medical Center, 1996.
CDC. Integrating public health information and surveillance
systems: a
report and recommendations from the CDC/ATSDR Steering
Committee on
Public Health Information and Surveillance System Development.
Atlanta,
Georgia: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, 1995.
CDC. Surveillance review and notification policy. Atlanta,
Georgia: US
Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, 1998.
Disclaimer
All MMWR HTML versions of articles are electronic conversions from ASCII text into HTML. This conversion may have resulted in character translation or format errors in the HTML version. Users should not rely on this HTML document, but are referred to the electronic PDF version and/or the original MMWR paper copy for the official text, figures, and tables. An original paper copy of this issue can be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Washington, DC 20402-9371; telephone: (202) 512-1800. Contact GPO for current prices.
**Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to mmwrq@cdc.gov.
