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About Syndromic Surveillance in Texas (NEW)

The purpose of syndromic surveillance is to garner early insights into health patterns to reduce their impact on the community. Syndromic surveillance helps to accomplish this by detecting changes in disease patterns and occurrence, by monitoring the burden illness, and by characterizing risk factors. By tracking symptomology data from patients in emergency departments or other settings, public health entities can detect unusual levels of illness and respond in a timely manner – all before diagnostic confirmation.

The basic steps of how syndromic surveillance works are as follows:

  1. A patient goes to an emergency department.
  2. The patient’s information is captured in the facility’s electronic health record (EHR).
  3. Selected elements of the EHR are sent to the syndromic surveillance system.
  4. The information is analyzed by the system for trends and abnormalities and the system creates alerts for aberrations in the data.
  5. The information is available for public health entities to conduct additional analysis.

To learn more about syndromic surveillance and its uses, see: 
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Overview of Syndromic Surveillance: What is Syndromic Surveillance?