Towards robust real-time surveillance of severe acute respiratory infections: Exploring the potential of an existing national intensive care unit registry

Objectives: Although many countries lack Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI) surveillance, establishing such systems is crucial for pandemic preparedness. Adjusting existing registries designed for other purposes may be viable. We investigated the potential of the Dutch National Intensive Care Evaluation (NICE) registry, originally designed to monitor intensive care unit (ICU) care quality, for near real-time SARI surveillance by determining data timeliness. Study design: A descriptive study was performed with retrospective ICU admissions (2012–2019). Methods: The lag time between SARI admissions and their data upload was determined. Incident SARI cases, SARI proportion relative to all medical admissions, and SARI patient mortality were examined at various lag times and compared to the complete data. Results: ICUs uploaded data at varying intervals. The Spearman correlation coefficient between the complete and incomplete ICU incident cases increased the most between 2 and 6 weeks of lag time and increased further with longer lag time. Data uploaded within two weeks fluctuated, with no uploaded data in 13 % of the weeks. Conclusion: The current uploading delays render the NICE registry unsuitable for near real-time SARI surveillance. Investing in timely and preferably automated data exchange mechanisms can enhance existing registry purposes. This may benefit other countries as well.