Page 62 - Timeliness of Infectious Disease Notification & Response Systems - Corien Swaan

60 Chapter 3
teria for suboptimal conditions available) and for shigellosis ≤ 1 and ≤ 3 days. Timeliness outcomes of the reporting system in each study were classified as follows: score ≥ 80% of notifications in time: ‘sufficient’, in line with the WHO JEE Tool which recommends timeliness of reporting at least 80% of all reporting units [14]. Scores between ≥50% and < 80% notifications in time were classified as ‘partly sufficient’, and scores < 50% of notifications in time as ‘insufficient’ as we consider the system functioning improperly when more than half of all notifications are not within the timeframe.
Several included studies presented timeliness outcomes of different delays in the notification system, outcomes of different (groups) of diseases or out- comes of different notification systems, within the same study. In case these outcomes involved different scores a mixed score was given: either ‘sufficient/ partly sufficient’, or ‘sufficient/ insufficient’, or ‘partly sufficient/insufficient’. When different outcomes in time were reported in a follow-up study, we chose the most recent outcome for scoring as this usually was the best and final result of a notification system. In intervention studies, we chose the outcome of the most successful intervention for scoring. In case a study presented outcomes of multiple reporters in different geographic areas, the outcome ≥ 80% of the reporters was used for scoring.
Subsequently, factors associated with timely notification systems were as- sessed. In addition, in studies comparing different notification systems, these outcomes were assessed separately. In intervention studies, timeliness of the dif- ferent reporting systems was compared to identify factors related to timeliness.
Results
An overview of the search process is depicted in the flowchart in Figure 3. In total 48 articles were included in the review [3, 9-11, 13, 15, 16, 18-58]. An over- view of study characteristics and results is shown in Table 1. The articles involve notification systems in 17 countries, mainly Northern America (United States 20 studies), Europe (14 studies) and East Asia (6). The majority of the studies (27 studies) analyze the timeliness of notification of one specific infectious disease, either in a disease specific notification system (13) or a generic notification sys- tem (14). Groups of infectious diseases were analyzed in 21 studies, one study analyzed timeliness of reporting of several syndromes.