Increasing infectious disease deaths, the emergence of new infections, and bioterrorism have made surveillance for infectious diseases a public health concern.Medical examiners and coroners certify approximately 20% of all deaths that occur within the United States and can be a key source of information regarding infectious disease deaths.We hypothesized that a computer-assisted search tool (algorithm) could detect infectious disease deaths from a medical Colloidal Minerals examiner database, thereby reducing the time and resources required to perform such surveillance manually.We developed two algorithms, applied them to a medical examiner database, and verified the cases identified against the opinion of a panel charger of experts.
The algorithms detected deaths with infectious components with sensitivities from 67% to 94%, and predictive value positives ranging from 8% to 49%.Algorithms can be useful for surveillance in medical examiner offices that have limited resources or for conducting surveillance across medical examiner jurisdictions.