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Announcement: New System for Monitoring Emergency Department Visits for Influenza-Like Illness

CDC has partnered with the International Society for Disease Surveillance and the Public Health Informatics Institute to enhance surveillance for influenza-like illness (ILI) through a system called "Distribute." The Distribute system aggregates information from hospital emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance systems operated by state and local health departments; the name reflects the shared and distributed responsibilities for developing and managing the system.

This new ILI surveillance system complements the existing CDC influenza surveillance systems by providing further characterization of geographic- and age-specific trends. The number of states or local areas represented on the Distribute web page will increase over time as additional health departments participate in the Distribute system. Information on trends in ILI ED visits from the participating health departments is available at http://www.ISDSDistribute.org.

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Date last reviewed: 10/8/2009