Frequently Asked Questions
General
What is NC DETECT?
Who develops and manages NC DETECT?
How is NC DETECT related to NCHESS?
How have North Carolinians benefited from
NC DETECT?
Who pays for NC DETECT?
Data Access
Who is permitted to access the NC DETECT data?
Can other hospitals view data from our hospital?
Technical
What data elements are available in NC DETECT?
Where do the data physically reside?
NC DETECT 5.0 (Web Application)
What browsers do I need to use when accessing NC DETECT
5.0?
How does NC DETECT 5.0 group data by week?
Why are signals and counts different if I switch between
searching by county and by hospital for my geographic area in the emergency
department data?
My search results aren't as expected... I expected
higher numbers in my search results... My syndrome counts aren't as high
as expected..
How do I sign up to get NC DETECT training?
General
What is NC DETECT?
The North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT) is North Carolina's statewide syndromic surveillance system. NC DETECT was created by the North Carolina Division of Public Health (NC DPH) in 2004 in collaboration with the Carolina Center for Health Informatics (CCHI) in the UNC Department of Emergency Medicine to address the need for early event detection and timely public health surveillance in North Carolina using a variety of secondary data sources. Authorized users are currently able to view data from emergency departments, the Carolinas Poison Center, and the Pre-hospital Medical Information System (PreMIS), as well as pilot data from select urgent care centers.
Who develops and manages
NC DETECT?
Staff at the Carolina Center for Health Informatics in the UNC Department of Emergency Medicine (CCHI), under contract
to the North Carolina Division of Public Health (NC DPH) develop and manage
NC DETECT. CCHI collaborates with NC DPH on all aspects of NC DETECT
development and most NC DETECT development is user-driven. Contact us if you have suggestions: ncdetect@listserv.med.unc.edu
How is NC DETECT related
to NCHESS?
Data from the North Carolina Hospital Emergency Surveillance System (NCHESS)
are loaded into NC DETECT (which was formerly known as the North Carolina
Bioterrorism and Emerging Infection Prevention System, NC BEIPS). CCHI monitors the
quality of the NCHESS data and works with hospitals, their vendors and
the North Carolina Hospital Association (NCHA) to ensure NC DETECT users
have access to the most accurate data possible.
How have North Carolinians
benefited from NC DETECT?
With NC DETECT, public health officials at the local, regional and state
levels are able to monitor a variety of important public health issues
in a secure and timely fashion, including influenza, post-hurricane health
issues, injury and violence, and vaccine-preventable disease surveillance.
For example, NC DETECT users have monitored illness and injury effects
after several hurricanes hurricanes, analyzed ED use at select hospitals
by Katrina evacuees, monitored heat-related illness, the health effects of wildfires, and uncovered unreported cases of tuberculosis and tularemia. Before
NC DETECT, similar surveillance was either simply not performed, relied
on manual, redundant data entry, or had a considerable time lag. Check out our publications page to view a list of websites, publications and presentations based on data from NC DETECT.
Since NC DETECT is designed to uncover suspicious patterns of illness
in both human and animal populations, it is a key tool in the early detection
of emerging infectious diseases, such as new strains of influenza.
Who pays for NC DETECT?
NC DETECT is funded from federal bioterrorism grants administered through
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and disbursed by the North
Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Public Health.
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Data Access
Who is permitted to access
the NC DETECT data?
Users authorized by the NC Division of Public Health may access NC DETECT
data. To request access to NC DETECT, please read the Terms of Use and
complete the online Account
Request form.
Can other hospitals view data
from our hospital?
Hospital users can view data from their own hospital/hospital system only
and statewide data aggregated by patient county of residence with no hospital
identifiers.
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Technical
What data elements are
being collected?
Please visit the NC DETECT data elements
page to read what we are collecting.
Where do the NC DETECT
data physically reside?
The NC DETECT data are housed at a secure data center that provides 24/7/365
security and support.
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NC DETECT 5.0 (Web Application)
What browsers do I need
to use when accessing NC DETECT 5.0?
NC DETECT has been tested using Internet Explorer 8.0+, Mozilla Firefox
3.6+, Google Chrome 8, and may not work properly with other browsers.
How does NC DETECT 5.0 group
data by week?
A complete week in NC DETECT begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday. If
you select a date range on a case report and view the data by week on
a chart, NC DETECT will NOT alter your date range to make sure you are
using a complete week. Please use the calendar tool to ensure that you
are starting your search date with a Sunday and ending with a Saturday
if you would like to group the results by week.
Why are signals and counts
different if I switch between searching by county and by hospital for
my geographic area in the emergency department data?
There are several reasons. Searching by hospital includes all patients
who visited that hospital, regardless of where they live. Searching by
county is based on a patient's county of residence. Patients may visit
a hospital that is not in their county of residence. Similarly, out of
state patients may visit a hospital that you have access to; they will
be included in results searched on by hospital but will not be included
in results searched on by county. Searching by county(ies) or PHRST region(s)
also excludes records with NULL (missing) counties, but these visits will
be included in searches by hospital.
My search results aren't
as expected... I expected higher numbers in my search results... My syndrome
counts aren't as high as expected...
All of these questions are related to data completeness. In order to ensure
that you are viewing complete data, please view the total visit counts
for the hospital or county you are analyzing. You can do this in the Syndrome
Overview Report (by location, then syndrome) or in the Visit Counts by
Day / Week / Month report. Local and state users can also view ED completeness in the Dashboard reports. If the visit counts look normal, the data may
have missing data elements that are affecting your counts. In addition,
all users should refer to the hospital status
table to see when hospitals in their respective region(s) began sending
data to NC DETECT. If you ever have any concerns about the quality of
the NC DETECT data you are viewing, please contact us at ncdetect@listserv.med.unc.edu.
How do I sign up to get
NC DETECT training?
Users interested in customized training on NC DETECT should contact Amy Ising to schedule a session: (919) 966-8853 or ising (at) ad (dot) unc (dot) edu. Training sessions can last
from 30 minutes to 2 hours and can be Web-based, at our site or at the
location of one's choosing (pending travel approval). You can also access the NC DETECT user guide anytime from the Web application after login and may also find the NC DETECT cheat sheet to be helpful.
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