July Newsletter - 2004

Institute Adjunct Professor Zelicoff continues refinements for the syndromic surveillance program SYRIS

The Syndrome Reporting Information System (SYRIS), developed by ARES Corporation of Burlingame California, is being installed in several large hospital emergency departments and clinics in Central Massachusetts starting in early July. Physicians, nurses, and EMS professionals will enter syndromic data from computers connected to the Internet via cell phone and wired connections, and public health officials and epidemiologists will evaluate the data and provide rapid feedback to clinicians and other users. SYRIS is available to all public health jurisdictions in the US for testing and evaluation. The software has been developed to meet CDC guidelines for syndrome surveillance systems as recently reviewed in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Center staff have intensively reviewed SYRIS and plan on utilizing the software in upcoming exercises to test the utility of SYRIS for routine medical and public health practice and also emergency response to an infectious disease epidemic. We recommend that all public health officials consider testing SYRIS, as our preliminary evaluation strongly suggests that it is an extremely cost-effective tool that can improve medical and veterinary practice by providing near real-time information on population health in individual public health jurisdictions.

The point of contact for SYRIS is: Alan P. Zelicoff, MD. Phone: 505-272-7102, e-mail: azelicoff@arescorporation.com. You can also read an on-line version of the SYRIS manual (with illustrations) at: http://www.zelicoff.com/SYRIS/SYRISOnlineManual/SYRISManual.html

Have a question or comment? Email bioterr@slu.edu