Computerised Infectious Disease Reporting

CIDR piloting is well underway in the North East and NDSC where all notifiable disease notifications are now being reported to NDSC through the new computerised system, as well as through existing channels. Dual reporting will remain in place until CIDR goes live.
 
Laboratories in the North Eastern Region and a number of reference laboratories are taking part in the pilot scheme along with Public Health in the North Eastern Health Board. The National Virus Reference Laboratory (NVRL), the Salmonella Reference Laboratory, the Meningococcal Reference Laboratory and the MRSA Reference Laboratory are providing information on the incidence of notifiable disease in the North East for the duration of the pilot.
 
Commenting on the laboratory participation, NDSC’s Senior Surveillance Scientist, Colm Grogan said that the pilot scheme is working well. “The test phase will end around the middle of September and we hope to have a complete evaluation of the process within a few weeks of the finish.
 
“At the moment the labs in Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda and the NVRL are updating data directly from the laboratory information systems (LIMS) to CIDR. The other laboratories are entering data manually. Individual laboratories decide for themselves whether to upload data from LIMS or use manual entry. The decision is usually based on a number of factors including the volume of data they are likely to notify,” he said.
 
The NDSC CIDR IT team have migrated all historical non-named patient data to CIDR from the current notification system (WANDA). They are also importing weekly notifications into CIDR, for all areas except the North East, which provides named patient data to CIDR directly as part of the pilot scheme.
 
The full list of labs participating in the pilot scheme is: Our Lady of Lourdes - Drogheda, Our Lady’s Hospital - Navan, Louth County Hospital – Dundalk, Cavan General Hospital, Monaghan General Hospital, The National Virus Reference Laboratory, the Salmonella Reference Laboratory, the Meningococcal Reference Laboratory and the MRSA Reference Laboratory.
 
Data submitted by the MRSA laboratory is for EARSS reporting only.
 
Over 50 laboratories nationwide will eventually use the CIDR system when it goes live.
 
The CIDR Team are finalising arrangements to visit each Health Board during the pilot in order to provide an update on progress and to give future users an opportunity to discuss the pilot processes. The team will use a portable CIDR training environment on these visits to provide a demonstration of the system. Attendees will have an opportunity to use and get a feel for the system during these sessions and the CIDR team will be available to help and answer any questions that arise.
 
The first of these visits took place in the North Western Health Board last week.