Subject Area: surveillance

Population-based electronic health data, such as disease registries, administrative data, and electronic medical records are increasingly used to monitor trends and variations in chronic diseases such as diabetes, arthritis, and heart disease. The benefits of these data are timely, efficient, and cost-effective access. However these data were not intended for surveillance, and therefore their fitness for such purposes must be evaluated for these purposes. This presentation will explore questions about “fitness for use” of electronic health data in disease surveillance, and explore the role of machine-learning methods to improve data quality.

This presentation begins with a presentation by Dr. John Soghigian on public-academic collaboration. Then, Dr. Victoria Ng presents citizen science approach to mosquito surveillance.

Beginning in November 2021, Canada has repeatedly contended with outbreaks of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, impacting both domestic poultry and wild bird populations. These outbreaks have not only posed public health risks but also caused widespread disruption and significant economic damage within the bird farming industry. This study introduces a new digital-based surveillance approach and Early Warning System (EWS) that harnesses publicly available web data to track and anticipate avian influenza outbreaks with greater speed and efficiency.

IMPACT has been active for over 30 years at 14 Canadian centres. It is responsible for surveillance of adverse events following immunizations, vaccine failures and key vaccine preventable infectious diseases. This presentation will highlight essential functions informing public health and surveillance utilizing case study examples.

This presentation will provide an overview of the findings from CANCOVID-Preg, a pan-Canadian surveillance program of SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy. CANCOVID-Preg includes data on >40,000 pregnancies in Canada from 2020-2022 that were impacted by COVID-19 and was utilized over the course of the pandemic to guide public health and vaccination recommendations. With this data, we have described the impact on maternal and infant health associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy, elucidated the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 variants and maternal, pregnancy, and infant outcomes, and demonstrated the protective effect of vaccination in each variant period.

This presentation provides an overview of the Vision 2030 development, a depiction of a high-functioning public health surveillance ‘system of systems’ and showcases how some ongoing initiatives by public health partners in Canada are addressing the persistent challenges in public health and contributing toward achieving the vision.