The current surveillance system only focuses on notifiable infectious diseases in China. The arrival of the big-data era provides us a chance to elaborate on the full spectrum of infectious diseases.
Methods
In this population-based observational study, we used multiple health-related data extracted from the Shandong Multi-Center Healthcare Big Data Platform from January 2013 to June 2017 to estimate the incidence density and describe the epidemiological characteristics and dynamics of various infectious diseases in a population of 3,987,573 individuals in Shandong province, China.
Results
In total, 106,289 cases of 130 infectious diseases were diagnosed among the population, with an incidence density [ID] of 694.86 per 100,000 person-years. Besides 73,801 cases of 35 notifiable infectious diseases, 32,488 cases of 95 non-notifiable infectious diseases were identified. The overall ID continuously increased from 364.81 per 100,000 person-years in 2013 to 1071.80 per 100,000 person-years in 2017 [χ2 test for trend, P