Background: The development of an infectious disease surveillance and outbreak response system in the Royal Thai Army should be recognized as both an important step in the development of an overall preventive medicine capability and as an achievable goal.

Prompt recognition of disease outbreaks and rapid diagnosis can allow for intervention and the institution of prophylactic measures that can decrease morbidity and mortality. Recognition of trends in hospital utilization and disease and non-disease patterns can allow the RTA Medical Department the opportunity for establishing policies based on epidemiology and tangible data.

The RTA medical system captures patient data using a variety of methods and systems, both electronic and paper based. Unit Based Surveillance system (UBS) software is implemented at the internet-capable units to record received data from sick call log books used at battalion and company level units, from hospitalized military personnel records, and from border crosser patients along the covered area borders. Automating this data into a standardized electronic format and collating the information into a data warehouse makes it possible for data mining and analysis to achieve early recognition in the natural course of an infectious disease outbreak and create an opportunity to intercede.

Automation of this unit based information system will: