Reflections on an evaluation of the Dutch infectious diseases surveillance information system

The Netherlands' Infectious diseases Surveillance Information System (ISIS) was developed 12 years ago as an early warning system for the country. The initial objective was to establish a surveillance system that gathered the test results of all micro-organisms from all medical microbiology laboratories (MMLs) in the Netherlands on a daily basis in order to create an early warning system. This paper analyses the most important results of a recent evaluation of the system. The evaluation was based on an analysis of early warning signals to detect outbreaks, number of visits to the ISIS website, and interviews with stakeholders, documentation on the ISIS system, and analyses of the ISIS MML database. While the daily collection of data on all micro-organisms for early warning has been achieved, the connection of all 85 MMLs in the Netherlands to the central ISIS MML database has not been achieved - only 18 MMLs have been connected. This has resulted in a low coverage and non-representative selection of MMLs for the Netherlands and therefore national outbreaks were missed. Data were used to determine trends in antimicrobial resistance over time. The ISIS system was not found suitable for early warning since outbreaks were detected via other systems. However, with some adaptations the ISIS system could be suitable for the surveillance of antimicrobial resistance. Furthermore, the discontinuation of this network would cause the loss of the most important data system for antimicrobial resistance in the Netherlands, since there is no other national system that gathers data on this topic. This evaluation resulted in a restart of the network. .