Panorama is the name for an integrated suite of tools, not just for surveillance but also case management. In the budget--I think it was in 2004--money was given to Canada Health Infoway for the development of a surveillance tool that could also serve as a case management tool. There are a number of aspects to the modules. The one we're piloting is around food-borne illness.
All provinces have been involved in the discussions, and a number of provinces have signed on to it. Different provinces use different systems. The reason for the funding in the first place was the recognition of the value of a system that could bring together the work of a public health nurse, a public health inspector, and immunization records. You can interrelate the data more efficiently and have more timely data in terms of reporting, for instance.
There are many systems out there, but this is the one it was felt would be valuable to put together. Now it's coming to the point where provinces are actually looking at implementation. Not all provinces or territories will be implementing it at this point. Some have other systems they use. Our chief concern federally is that whatever systems are used, the systems are able to either talk to each other or we have a way to recognize when a potential outbreak is developing and gather the data for the information we need to do our collective jobs.
In the old days we used to do that by paper--or if there was something urgent, a phone call, etc. Now, with the advent of the linkage of the public health laboratories across the country, the PulseNet Canada system allows us to say, “Oh, this particular listeria is the same strain of listeria we're seeing in the three cases in Ontario, the two cases in B.C. What are the characteristics of that?”
That's what allowed us to figure out that we actually had an outbreak with the listeria outbreak at Maple Leaf Foods. At the peak of that outbreak, there were only five to seven cases a week reported in Canada, against a background of 20,000 to 30,000 of us every day with those symptoms.
There is the combination of the laboratory surveillance we do and the work in comparing with other surveillance systems--and if there is time, perhaps Frank can speak a bit more to that--so that we have the picture we need to identify when something is going wrong.
Whether it's for this, or the next H1, or whatever, Panorama will hopefully give us faster, more accurate data because of the ability to electronically roll up that information. It doesn't keep us from doing our jobs--there are other ways we get that information--but it will make it more efficient. It will make the work of inspectors and nurses hopefully easier in terms of the collection of information and the management of cases.