Frameworks and tools for evaluating health surveillance systems

Health surveillance systems are complex as they can target different types of objectives—early disease detection to prevent introduction and case detection to ensure disease control or demonstration of freedom from disease. Such systems are designed as networks of multiple actors with different needs and constraints. To allow for the design of cost-effective systems, timely evaluation is required. In 2015, Calba et al. reviewed the existing animal health evaluation frameworks, highlighting their limits and the need to develop an integrated approach to epidemiological and economic evaluation of surveillance systems. This work emphasized the need to build from current evaluation approaches and also the importance of promoting assessment of attributes covering the social and economic aspects of animal health surveillance. All surveillance systems require continuous evaluation to improve effectiveness, expected outcomes, and impact. The aim of this chapter is to build on the past 10 years of work in this area and propose a step-by- step framework to facilitate the evaluation of animal health surveillance systems.