Initial situation/scientific issue

There is an urgent need to implement severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) surveillance systems to monitor the circulation of several respiratory pathogens, assess their burden of disease and estimate the vaccination programme impact. The project covers the design, implementation and evaluation of national surveillance systems using routinely collected electronic health records (EHR) in EU/EEA for SARI.

Project description/methodology

The ECDC project "Design and implementation of multinational surveillance systems using routinely collected electronic health records in EU/EEA" is coordinated by Epiconcept and involves Partner Institutes from EU member states.

Outcomes

In summer 2023 a SARI surveillance system was established in Austria using near real-time hospital admission and discharge ICD-10 codes (10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases) provided by the Federation of Austrian Social Insurances. Also, a public dashboard has been set up (https://sari-dashboard.at/en/). Before going public several preparatory meetings have been held between the main stakeholders who comprise of the Federation of Austrian Social Insurances who hosts the data, the Austrian Ministry of Health and AGES. Nearly all Austrian hospitals (total for 2022: 264) report weekly updated admission and discharge SARI-data to the Federation of Austrian Social Insurances. The surveillance system can also provide regional data.