On the use and evaluation of prospective scan methods for health-related surveillance

William H. Woodall, J Brooke Marshall, Michael D. Joner, Shannon E Fraker and Abdel-Salam G Abdel-Salam

Journal Of The Royal Statistical Society Series A, 2008, vol. 171, issue 1, pages 223-237

Abstract: We review some prospective scan-based methods that are used in health-related applications to detect increased rates of mortality or morbidity and to detect bioterrorism or active clusters of disease. We relate these methods to the use of the moving average chart in industrial applications. Issues that are related to the performance evaluation of spatiotemporal scan-based methods are discussed. In particular we clarify the definition of a recurrence interval and demonstrate that this measure does not reflect some important aspects of the statistical performance of scan-based, and other, surveillance methods. Some research needs in this area are given. Copyright 2008 Royal Statistical Society.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.blackwell ... 67-985X.2007.00502.x link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0964-1998

Access Statistics for this article

Journal Of The Royal Statistical Society Series A is edited by A. Fielding and G. Verbeke

More articles in Journal Of The Royal Statistical Society Series A from Royal Statistical Society
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().