Assessment of a military real-time epidemiological surveillance system by its users in French Guiana

In October 2004, a real-time surveillance system prototype was established for the armed forces in French Guiana; the ‘2SE FAG’ system (Surveillance Spatiale des Epidemies au sein des Forces Armees en Guyane). This is composed of a recording network and an analytical network (Fig. 1). In the recording network, all military physicians and nurses have been equipped with information technology tools to allow them to record, in real time, information about military patients presenting with fever, in a clinical form in dedicated software. This is forwarded to an analysis centre as soon as possible using telephone or satellite. The analytical network is based in both French Guiana (Cayenne) and mainland France (Marseilles). It is a secure and private network, and data are integrated within a geographical information system and an MySQL database. Statistical analysis is automatic and uses the exponentially weighted moving average and the current past experience