Snow Disease Surveillance System Study (Snow)

February 15, 2017 updated by: University Hospital of North Norway
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".

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

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.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Anticipated)

200

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • ADULT
  • OLDER_ADULT
  • CHILD

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

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

Exclusion Criteria:

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

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
  • Allocation: NON_RANDOMIZED
  • Interventional Model: PARALLEL
  • Masking: NONE

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
NO_INTERVENTION: Control area
In the control areas we will monitor the prevalence and treatment of communicable diseases without giving the participants online access to disease surveillance information
EXPERIMENTAL: Intervention area
In these areas we will give study participants online access to epidemiological data for communicable diseases
Other: Online disease surveillance data access
In the intervention areas we will give the study participants online access to the Snow disease surveillance system. The system will provide data about the incidents of respiratory and gastrointestinal communicable diseases in the patient population.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Earlier diagnosis and treatment for communicable diseases
Time Frame: Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)

General practitioners (GP) have three possible decisions in a consultation with a patient; 1) treat on suspicion, 2) take a sample, 3) wait and see whether the patient recovers or get worse, or 4) a combination of 1 and 2.

In situations with decision 3 (wait and see) the patient may return to a consultation later on.

The hypothesis is that online access to epidemiological data from the local patient population will enable GPs to make the right decision more often based on knowledge about the epidemiological situation in the patient population.
Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Earlier detection of local disease outbreaks
Time Frame: Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
Syndromic surveillance enables earlier detection of local disease outbreaks compared to traditional laboratory based surveillance. We will record the time of disease outbreak detection in both intervention and control areas and compare.
Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
Lower number of infected during disease outbreaks
Time Frame: Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
We will compare the number of infected in the intervention and control areas. The hypothesis is that the intervention areas will have fewer infected compared to the control areas.
Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
Impact on health service costs
Time Frame: Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)
We will measure the cost related to communicable diseases in the control and intervention areas. Our prediction is that it will change.
Measured at the end of the data collection period, approx. 1.5 year. (December 2012)

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

University Hospital of North Norway

Collaborators

University of Tromso
The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Health
Norwegian Health Network (state owned enterprise)

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Johan Gustav Bellika, PhD, University of Tromsø, Department of Computer Science

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

October 1, 2010

Primary Completion (ACTUAL)

December 1, 2012

Study Completion (ACTUAL)

December 1, 2012

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

October 15, 2010

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

November 1, 2010

First Posted (ESTIMATE)

November 2, 2010

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (ACTUAL)

February 16, 2017

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 15, 2017

Last Verified

December 1, 2015

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • ID 3746/ HST954-10

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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