Surveillance is the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data regarding a health-related event to reduce morbidity and mortality, and to improve health.
For health care facilities, the goal of surveillance is to control the transmission of microorganisms.
Surveillance helps characterize the burden of infection, identify risk and protective factors, evaluate intervention effectiveness, monitor trends, and identify outbreaks
Surveillance has been proven to decrease the incidence of health care-associated infections1.
1. Infection Prevention and Control Canada. (2023, December 4). Appendix A: Surveillance definitions for infections in Canadian long-term care homes: 2023 update. https://ipac-canada.org/surveillance-statistics-resources