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Design of a National Retail Data Monitor for Public Health Surveillance

Affiliations of the authors: The RODS Laboratory, Center for Biomedical Informatics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (MMW, F-CT, JUE, WRH); Global Strategic Solutions, Cincinnati, Ohio (JMR).

Correspondence and reprints: Michael M. Wagner, MD, PhD, The RODS Laboratory, Center for Biomedical Informatics, University of Pittsburgh, Suite 550, 100 Technology Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15219; e-mail: <mmw{at}cbmi.pitt.edu>.

Received for publication: 03/06/03; accepted for publication: 05/13/03.

The National Retail Data Monitor receives data daily from 10,000 stores, including pharmacies, that sell health care products. These stores belong to national chains that process sales data centrally and utilize Universal Product Codes and scanners to collect sales information at the cash register. The high degree of retail sales data automation enables the monitor to collect information from thousands of store locations in near to real time for use in public health surveillance. The monitor provides user interfaces that display summary sales data on timelines and maps. Algorithms monitor the data automatically on a daily basis to detect unusual patterns of sales. The project provides the resulting data and analyses, free of charge, to health departments nationwide. Future plans include continued enrollment and support of health departments, developing methods to make the service financially self-supporting, and further refinement of the data collection system to reduce the time latency of data receipt and analysis.

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