Cyberspace tapped to curb disease

01/10/00- Updated 10:28 AM ET

$65M plan emphasizes 'surveillance'

By Susan Page, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration will propose spending $65 million next year to help establish a nationwide computer system to rapidly track the outbreak of infectious diseases such as influenza and hepatitis C and notify doctors how best to treat them.

The electronic "surveillance" network would replace a patchwork system that relies mostly on phone calls and postcards to alert authorities to the spread of dangerous diseases.

Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, says the administration will propose increasing funding by nearly 50% for a fledging program that would rely on cyberspace to move a doctor's disease report from a city clinic to the state public health service to the CDC within a day.

The system also would allow the CDC to alert doctors immediately that, for instance, a strain of infection they're treating doesn't respond to a particular antibiotic.

"With an electronic system, after the first couple of cases even in very distant sites and seemingly unrelated, we can look at the genetic pattern side-by-side in Atlanta and say, 'Those are exactly the same bug,' " Koplan says. "You can save hundreds of sick people and millions of dollars and go to the source of it immensely more quickly this way."

The threat from infectious diseases is rising. Since 1973, more than 35 emerging diseases have been identified, including AIDS, toxic shock syndrome, Legionnaire's disease, Lyme disease and hepatitis C. Some old diseases have reemerged as "superbugs" with drug-resistant characteristics, in part because of the overuse and misuse of antibiotics.

Such a system could be used to track this season's severe outbreak of flu, which has left emergency rooms and hospitals crowded with patients.

States send cumulative reports to the CDC electronically. But the CDC says 90% of the data gathered by the states from counties and local authorities comes from pen-and-paper reports mailed in or by using the telephone, not by secure and instantaneous electronic communication.

The White House is expected to announce the proposal Monday and include it in the fiscal 2001 budget being released Feb. 7. Administration officials say the approach has bipartisan support in Congress.

The money would be used for various expenses, including installing software so county and state computer systems can communicate with the CDC and with one another and ensuring security on lines used to transmit information.

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