TY - JOUR AU - Lall, Ramona AU - Levin-Rector, Alison AU - Mathes, Robert AU - Weiss, Don PY - 2014/03/09 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Detecting Unanticipated Increases in Emergency Department Chief Complaint Keywords JF - Online Journal of Public Health Informatics JA - OJPHI VL - 6 IS - 1 SE - Lightning Talks DO - 10.5210/ojphi.v6i1.5069 UR - https://ojphi.org/ojs/index.php/ojphi/article/view/5069 SP - AB - The chief complaint (CC) text field is a rich source of information, but its current use for syndromic surveillance is limited to a fixed set of syndromes defined a priori using keywords. To identify unanticipated sudden increases in word frequency, we developed a simple method that compares the frequency of every word in the CC text field on a given day against the average frequency of the same word during a baseline period. This could prove useful for situational awareness during routine surveillance and emergencies. ER -