Automated collection of pathogen-specific diagnostic data for real-time syndromic epidemiological studies

Public health decision makers rely on accurate, real-time monitoring of infectious diseases for outbreak preparedness and response. Pathogen early detection is improved by systems that are disease-specific. Here we describe a system, FilmArray® Trend, for rapid disease reporting that is syndrome-based but pathogen-specific. Results from a multiplex molecular diagnostic test are sent directly to a cloud database. www.syndromictrends.com presents these data in near real-time. Trend preserves patient privacy by removing or obfuscating patient identifiers. We summarize the respiratory pathogen results, for 20 organisms from >320,000 patient samples acquired as standard of care testing over the last four years from 18 clinical laboratories in the United States. The majority of pathogens show an influenza-like seasonality, rhinovirus has fall and spring peaks and adenovirus and bacterial pathogens show constant detection over the year. Interestingly, the rate of pathogen co-detections, on average 7.6%, matches expectations based on the relative abundance of organisms present.