Background
Mandatory notification of health care–associated (HA) infections, including influenza-like
illness (ILI) outbreaks, has been implemented in France since 2001. In 2012, the system
moved to online electronic notification of HA infections (e-SIN). The objectives of
this study are to describe ILI outbreak notifications to Santé publique France (SPF), the French national public health agency, and to evaluate the impact of notification
dematerialization.
Methods
All notifications of HA ILI outbreaks between July 2001 and June 2015 were included.
Notifications before and after e-SIN implementation were compared regarding notification
delay and information exhaustiveness.
Results
Overall, 506 HA ILI outbreaks were reported, accounting for 7,861 patients and health
care professionals. Median delay between occurrence of the first case and notification
was, respectively, 32 and 13 days before and after e-SIN utilization (P < .001). Information exhaustiveness was improved by electronic notification regarding
HA status (8.5% of missing data before and 2.3% after e-SIN, P = .003), hypotheses of cause (25.4% of missing data before vs 8.0% after e-SIN, P < .001), and level of event control (23.7% of missing data before vs 7.5% after e-SIN,
P < .001).
Conclusions
HA influenza notifications, including HA ILI or influenza, to health authorities are
essential to guide decisional instances and health care practices. Electronic notifications
have improved the timeliness and quality of information transmitted.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 21, 2017
Footnotes
Conflicts of interest: None to report.
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
