Performance of automatic early warning system of communicable diseases in Dalian, Liaoning,2008-2011

Objective To analyze the performance of automatic early warning system of communicable diseases in Dalian during 2008-2011 and provide scientific evidence for the improvement of early warning system. Methods Descriptive epidemiological analysis was conducted on the information obtained from the automatic early-warning system from 2008 to 2011,and chi-square and one way ANOVA analysis were conducted to compare the disease specific positive rate of early warning and response interval in different place and time. Results Totally 9415 warnings signals of disease outbreaks in all districts in Dalain, involving 18 kinds of communicable diseases, were released by automatic early warning system during this period, and 228 of them were verified by field investigation, the positive rate of early warning was 2.42%. The major diseases being frequently involved included other infectious diarrhea, mumps, rubella, bacillary dysentery, scarlet fever and hand foot and mouth disease, accounting for 91.85% of total signals. The diseases with high positive rate were influenza A (H1N1), mumps, rubella and hand foot and mouth disease. From warning signal releasing to reporting, the median of the response interval was 0.53 hour and the inter-quartile range was 1.55 hour. From reporting to field investigation, the median of the response interval was 0.10 hour and the inter-quartile range was 5.15 hours. Conclusion Problems still exist in application of the automatic early warning system of communicable disease and improvement of this early warning system should be made.