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CASE REPORT
Developing an integrated syndromic surveillance application for infectious diseases in New York City
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1 System-wide Special Pathogens Program, Emergency Management, New York City Health + Hospitals, New York,
United States of America
2 Data and Analytics, Quality and Safety, New York City Health + Hospitals, New York,
United States of America
3 Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Grossman School of Medicine, New York University, New York,
United States of America
4 Division of Infectious Diseases, Bellevue Hospital, New York City Health + Hospitals, New York,
United States of America
5 Department of Medicine, Grossman School of Medicine, New York University, New York,
United States of America
Received: 13 June 2025 | Revised: 7 January 2026 | Accepted: 10 February 2026 | Published online: 23 June 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract
The New York City Health + Hospitals’ initiative to develop a comprehensive infectious disease syndromic surveillance application marks a transformative step in healthcare and public health informatics, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, which demonstrated the need for swift detection and action against infectious disease threats. This article describes the collaborative efforts and methods employed to construct this initial surveillance system. The application is uniquely designed to amalgamate chief complaints with ancillary data points, such as travel history, to offer a nuanced view of potential outbreaks. The system is integrated with the enterprise electronic health record through automated extraction and transformation workflows, and it delivers interactive analytics through Tableau dashboards. We describe the implementation of this system for monitoring four syndromes, influenza-like illness, gastroenteritis, infectious rash, and asthma, and discuss the impact of these insights on healthcare and public health response and leadership decision-making.
Keywords
Syndromic surveillance
Infectious disease epidemiology
Public health informatics
Healthcare informatics
Electronic health records
Early warning systems
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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