Electronic System of Storage, Representation, and Analysis of Epidemiological Information on a Federal District Scale

The aim of the study was to work out an epidemiological atlas, the functional core of which is the database of the epidemiological process of actual infectious diseases in Privolzhsky Federal District (PFD).

Materials and Methods. The epidemiological atlas consists of the following components: a data bank, topographic base, direct data access tool, and visualizer of the epidemiological situation. The topographic base and data bank form a database, while the visualizer and direct access tools form a graphical shell for working with the database. The project was implemented as a website. Reports of PFD subjects filled-in in compliance with form No.2 “Information about infectious and parasitic diseases” served as the material for creating the database. The database is controlled by MySQL system, which provides the possibility to store the information in the form of linked tables. Using the PHP language the information is converted into pivot tables, diagrams of time dynamics, and schematic maps.

Results. To organize the process of acquisition, storage and maintaining the epidemiological atlas database in the running condition, a protocol of data exchange was designed and implemented into practice, the necessary software was created for semi-automatic and automatic report processing and inserting into the database. XLS (XLSX) format of the electronic tables was chosen as an exchange format.

The following functions are realized in the epidemiological atlas: automatic generation of reports from the database; the analysis of intra-annual incidence dynamics; evaluation of the current monthly dynamics of the morbidity rate compared to the retrospective information.

All generated materials can be exported in the form of XLS (CSV) tables or diagrams as PNG, JPEG, PDF files.

At present, the atlas represents a constantly functioning and regularly updated system accumulating data on infectious morbidity rate over all 14 PFD subjects with a spatial resolution to the administrative region subject and a time resolution of 1 month.

Conclusion. At present, there are no analogs to the “PFD Epidemiological Atlas” in the Russian Federation. Our project is a complete geoinformation system, where the possibilities of the initial data access, analytical and prognostic information acquisition, and export of the results are combined.

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Solntsev L.A., Zaitseva N.N., Efimov E.I. Electronic System of Storage, Representation, and Analysis of Epidemiological Information on a Federal District Scale. Sovremennye tehnologii v medicine 2017; 9(4): 170, https://doi.org/10.17691/stm2017.9.4.21