Application of information technology to the laboratory reporting of communicable disease in England and Wales.

The transmission of laboratory reports from diagnostic medical microbiology laboratories to the PHLS Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (CDSC) is a major component of surveillance of communicable disease in England and Wales. Information on more than 3800 types of organism is held on the CDSC database (labBASE). The volume of reporting has risen steadily during the last 17 years and electronic reporting via epiBASE is beginning to replace postal reporting. Computers are used extensively to collate and analyse data for surveillance reports which are disseminated via the Communicable Disease Report, Epinet and other means. Recent developments include the computer-aided detection of temporal clusters and the establishment of an electronic library of surveillance data.