North Carolina unveils system linking hospitals for quicker identification of outbreaks

North Carolina has created an electronic records system linking 113 hospitals in the state. The system will make it easier to search for warning signs of infectious disease outbreaks. The system is already in operation in seventy-two hospitals, and it is expected to become totally operational within a few weeks.

The system will be programmed electronically to monitor symptoms reported by emergency room doctors at the hospitals. The partial system recently aided state officials in determining an illness at a college sorority house was a food-borne infection rather than a stomach virus. A similar nationwide system — called BioSense — is being developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is expected to link about 250 hospitals in more than thirty cities by the end of this year.

The CDC says its system will be designed to help in the event of a bioterrorism attack or if a disease, such as bird flu, breaks out in the United States.