Determination of French influenza outbreaks periods between 1985 and 2011 through a web-based Delphi method

BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making

Research Article

Yann Le Strat¹  Alessandra Falchi²  Clément Turbelin³  Cécile Souty³  Flavien Quintus³  Marion Debin³  Thierry Blanchon³  Gilles Hejblum⁴  Pierre-Yves Boëlle⁴  Thomas Hanslik⁵ 

[1] Département des maladies infectieuses, Institut de Veille Sanitaire (InVS), F-94415, St Maurice, France;Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, UMR-S 707, F-75012, Paris, France;Réseau Sentinelles, U707 Inserm, Université de Corse, Laboratoire de Virologie, F-20250, Corte, France;Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, UMR-S 707, F-75012, Paris, France;Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR-S 707, F-75012, Paris, France;Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, UMR-S 707, F-75012, Paris, France;Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR-S 707, F-75012, Paris, France;Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, Hôpital Saint-Antoine, Unité de Santé Publique, F-75012, Paris, France;Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, UMR-S 707, F-75012, Paris, France;Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR-S 707, F-75012, Paris, France;Université Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, F-78000, Versailles, France;

关键词: Delphi technique;    Information science;    Consensus;    Influenza;    Epidemics;    Surveillance;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6947-13-138

 received in 2013-06-17, accepted in 2013-12-17,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAssessing the accuracy of influenza epidemic periods determined by statistical models is important to improve the performance of algorithms used in real-time syndromic surveillance systems. This is a difficult problem to address in the absence of a reliable gold standard. The objective of this study is to establish an expert-based determination of the start and the end of influenza epidemics in France.MethodsA three-round international web-based Delphi survey was proposed to 288 eligible influenza experts. Fifty-seven (20%) experts completed the three-rounds of the study. The experts were invited to indicate the starting and the ending week of influenza epidemics, on 32 time-series graphs of influenza seasons drawn using data from the French Sentinelles Network (Influenza-like illness incidence rates) and virological data from the WHO-FluNet. Twenty-six of 32 time-series graphs proposed corresponded to each of the French influenza seasons observed between 1985 and 2011. Six influenza seasons were proposed twice at each round to measure variation among expert responses.ResultsWe obtained consensual results for 88% (23/26) of the epidemic periods. In two or three rounds (depending on the season) answers gathered around modes, and the internal control demonstrated a good reproducibility of the answers. Virological data did not appear to have a significant impact on the answers or the level of consensus, except for a season with a major mismatch between virological and incidence data timings.ConclusionsThanks to this international web-based Delphi survey, we obtained reproducible, stable and consensual results for the majority of the French influenza epidemic curves analysed. The detailed curves together with the estimates from the Delphi study could be a helpful tool for assessing the performance of statistical outbreak detection methods, in order to optimize them.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Debin et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.