Use of telephone helpline data for syndromic surveillance of adverse events following immunization in Australia: A retrospective study, 2009 to 2017.

BACKGROUND

The increasing availability of electronic healthcare data offers an opportunity to enhance adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) signal monitoring in near real-time.

AIM: To evaluate the potential use of telephone helpline data to augment the existing AEFI surveillance system in Victoria, Australia.

METHODS

Anonymised telephone helpline call data were extracted between 2009 and 2017. For comparison, we included AEFI reports to the Victorian enhanced passive surveillance system, SAEFVIC-"Surveillance of Adverse Events Following Vaccination In the Community". The temporal pattern cross-correlation coefficient at different time lags was estimated as a measure of timeliness evaluation. Historically known AEFI signals in 2010 and 2015 were examined using the Farrington statistical signal detection algorithm.

RESULT: During the study period, overall, the telephone helpline centre received 2,005,226 calls. Of these, 0.68% (13,719) were AEFI-related. In the same period, SAEFVIC received 10,367 AEFI related reports. Cross-correlation analysis, generally, showed that the two datasets were moderately correlated (r = 0.4) at a negative lag of 1 week. For individual years, the cross-correlation coefficient was highest (r = 0.66) in 2010 with the telephone helpline data leading by 2 weeks. Our analysis indicated the 2010 reported incidence of febrile convulsions and the 2015 reported increased allergic-related reactions following seasonal influenza vaccination three weeks and one week earlier respectively.

CONCLUSION

Telephone helpline data was able to detect an increased rate of AEFI earlier than the enhanced passive AEFI surveillance system. This dataset offers a valuable and near real-time component of an integrated AEFI early signal detection system in Australia.