Symptoms from patients as the primary information source for real-time surveillance.

The aim of this study was to identify whether patients could become the primary data source for symptom based real-time surveillance. The study investigated people's attitude towards providing symptom information electronically before a consultation, and how they preferred to carry out the reporting. Data was collected by distributing questionnaires to 83 respondents. The results show that 96 percent of the respondents had a positive attitude towards providing information about their symptoms to the GP's office as soon as possible after falling ill. Over half of the respondents preferred to use e-mail or a web-interface to perform this task. Eighty four percent were willing to have their symptom data stored in their EPR and 76 percent agreed that the GP might access and present the symptoms together with the prevalence of matching diseases in order to assist the diagnostic process during the next consultation. This study indicates that patients could become the primary data source for symptom based surveillance in countries with high e-readiness.