Internet-based China information system for disease control and prevention

After the 2003 SARS epidemic, the Chinese government resolved to improve its disease surveillance system. The ministry of health took note of the successful use of modern information technology during the epidemic and built the world’s largest internet-based disease reporting system, called the China Information System for Disease Control and Prevention (CISDCP). The CISDCP had two important improvements compared with the previous reporting system. The first is that diseases were reported in real time. In the past, hospitals and clinics would submit case-report forms to their county or district CDC; local CDCs would submit report summaries once a month up the chain to the national CDC. With the CISDCP, hospitals and clinics immediately and directly reported through the internet. This innovation allows public-health officials to have real-time information on diseases so they can immediately identify disease outbreaks and implement any needed containment strategies. The second improvement of this new reporting system included the availability of case-based reporting instead of aggregate reporting. With case-based information, health officials can immediately identify the nature and location of a particular disease outbreak, the characteristics of clusters of cases (eg, age, sex, occupation), and (with geographic-information-system technology) the precise geographic location of the outbreak down to specific villages and households. Improved reporting of known infectious diseases will not necessarily lead to earlier detection of and rapid response to a new disease. To address this difficulty, the ministry of health developed a surveillance and response system for pneumonia of unknown cause, in which reporting through the CISDCP is required. In 2008, when the earthquake occurred in Sichuan, a solar battery cellular phone reporting programme was developed and integrated into the CISDCP system.