Methodology

Dengue is the most prevalentmosquito-borne viral disease thatspreads rapidly among people [1]. Insuch case, disease prevention andcontrol measures should be improvedvia early detection and monitoring ofoutbreaks. Early recognition of anoutbreak supports the health officersto plan pre-emptive measures.However, there is no completelycomputerised dengue surveillancesystem in Sri Lanka to notify andprevent these kind of communicablediseases [2]. Present manual dengueoutbreak prediction is incomplete andtime consuming [3]. This studyproposes a system that automates theentire manual surveillance systemwhich deals with various level of healthrelated officers by providing themfacilities such as monitoring denguerisk areas and reporting dengueoutbreaks to the public.

Introduction

[1] Pathirana, S., Kawabata, M., and Goonetilake, R., “Study of Potential Risk of Dengue Disease Outbreak in Sri Lanka using GIS and Statistical Modelling”, Journal of Rural and Tropical Public Health, vol. 8,pp. 8, 2009.

[2] Munasinghe, A., Premaratne, H. L., and Fernando, M. G. N.A.S., “Towards an Early Warning System toCombat Dengue”, International Journal of Computer Science and Electronics Engineering, vol. 1(2),pp. 252-256, 2013.

[3] Kalpana, C., Mahesan, S., and Bath, P. A, “Notifiable Disease Surveillance in Sri Lanka and the UnitedKingdom: A comparative study”, Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-Medical Informatics, vol. 4, 2013.

References

• Active surveillance• Inclusion of dengue risk notifications from private

hospitals• Integrating laboratory test results in to the notification

process• Centralised storage of dengue details that ensures data

privacy• Reduced time of notification process enables fast

prevention• Bridging the gap between medical officers and health

officers.• Summarising the data more user friendly• Dengue risk predictions will be effective

Strengths of the System

• In order to make an efficientreporting and early warning system,a gap analysis was conducted withthe help of northern region healthofficers and doctors of JaffnaTeaching Hospital to improve thesolution.

• The developed dengue surveillancesystem mainly targets to alert thepublic.

• In the system, a dynamic GIS denguerisk map is integrated and aheatmap can be visualised to alertthe public.

• Medical and Molecular EntomologyResearch Laboratory do theadditional dengue confirmative andserotype test and provide the detailsthrough the system.

Contributions

The proposed system is developed to be complete,timeliness and sensitivity that influence theinformation flow in the notification process whencomparing to the existing manual notifiable diseasesurveillance system at different levels. The systemsspeeds-up the detection and prevention of denguecases via a user friendly web-based intelligent system.In addition, public will be alerted through dengue riskmap. Furthermore, the system is expected to predictfuture dengue outbreak through a mathematicalmodel.

Innovativeness

As a near future work, the risk factors for dengue is being analysed and will bemodelled to produce more valid prediction of outbreaks.

Future Work

MOH : Medical Officers of Health EU : Epidemiology Unit SPHI : Supervising Public Health Inspector MMERL: Medical and Molecular Entomology Research LaboratoryPHI : Public Health Inspector PI : Principal InvestigatorLT : Laboratory Technician RDHS : Regional Directorate of Health ServicesRA : Research Assistant

Medical and Molecular EntomologyResearch Laboratory will conduct thefollowing tests

1. Dengue confirmative test:• NS-1• IgM• IgG

2. Dengue virus serotype test:• DENV1• DENV2• DENV3• DENV4

Serotype Test Summary

Doctors / Heath Officers

Hospital

System Control

Area PHI

MOH

MOH / SPHI

Regional Director of Health Service

RDHS

Database

PublicRelevant Authorities

Patient

Approved H544

SMS Alert GIS Risk Map

Predicted Model

H411

H544

Inform via SMS

H411

Approved H544

H544

H411a

H399

H399

2

1

2

3

3

5

4 4 44

5

6

7

6

7

Epidemiologist

EU

Lab Results

Lab Analysis

H411a

MMERL

PI / RA

Patients Details2

3

4

H399 : Weekly Return of Communicable Diseases MOH will enter the data

H411 : Communicable Disease Report - Part I PHI will enter the data

H411a: Communicable Disease Report - Part IIMOH will enter the data

H544 : Notification of Communicable Disease Doctor will enter the data

A WEB-BASED DENGUE MONITORING AND WARNING SYSTEMNirthika R., Ramanan A., and Surendran S.N.

Department of Computer Science, University of Jaffna{nirthika, a.ramanan, noble}@univ.jfn.ac.lk