Headlines - SurSaUD: All adult emergency departments in Burgundy have joined!

Following the 2003 heat wave, the InVS was tasked with developing a system capable of detecting new threats to public health from sources as diverse as environmental phenomena or emerging infectious diseases. "Syndromic surveillance" is therefore no longer focused on identified diseases or syndromes, but on structures capable of providing day-to-day information on the population’s health status. Hospital emergency departments (EDs) proved to be among the structures best suited to address this need. Furthermore, the computerization of certain departments allowed for rapid implementation, without overburdening emergency department staff, and enabled daily, automatic data collection. Thanks to the support of the General Directorate for Healthcare Provision (DGOS), close collaboration with the French Society of Emergency Medicine (SFMU) and the Regional Health Agencies (ARS), and the proactive efforts of healthcare facilities, the emergency department and death surveillance system (SurSaUD®) was able to expand from 23 participating emergency departments in July 2004 to more than 500 in 2014. The objectives and recent developments of SurSaUD® are presented in a special issue of the Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin. In Burgundy, the ARS has led a program to computerize emergency departments, enabling the expansion of data collection for Emergency Department Visit Summaries (RPU), with the assistance of the Regional Emergency Observatory (ORUB) and the E-Santé Bourgogne Health Cooperation Group. Thus, starting this month, all adult emergency departments in Burgundy upload RPUs daily to a regional monitoring and alert server and to the InVS, enabling the Cire to conduct health surveillance across its entire jurisdiction. In Franche-Comté, all emergency departments have been contributing to SurSaUD for several years. Obviously, improving the quality and interpretation of this data relies on close collaboration between emergency departments and the aforementioned partners within a regional public health network.