Expert Meeting on Privacy and Confidentiality in Syndromic Surveillance

The Issue in Brief

An expert meeting on syndromic and related public health surveillance systems was convened at Georgetown University with support from the International Society of Disease Surveillance (ISDS) to share experiences regarding privacy, confidentiality, and other legal and ethical issues; to clarify the means by which these legal and ethical issues enable or constrain data sharing; and to identify approaches to protect privacy and confidentiality.

The questions of whether aggregate, population-level data are sufficient for the intended public health purpose, and whether surveillance will lead to effective public health action, were discussed as well.

A preliminary report on the results of the meeting, drafted by Michael Stoto, is forthcoming.