Health-surveillance technology
The Olympic Winter Games Salt Lake City 2002 were the first Winter Games to use Real-time Outbreak and Disease Surveillance (RODS) technology, a digital public health surveillance system.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York City, and the bioterrorism acts in October 2001, drew attention to the increased bioterrorism risks and the need for detection of disease outbreaks for mass events. The spirit of collaboration and unity prompted by these incidents, and the approaching Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, provided the opportunity to deploy an automated syndromic surveillance system.
Since then, advanced real-time health monitoring systems have been improved and used in other major sports events such as the 2003 Rugby World Cup, the FIFA 2006 and 2010 World Cups, the Olympic Winter Games Torino 2006 and Vancouver 2010, and the Olympic Games London 2012.
Real-time Outbreak and Disease Surveillance (RODS) technology uses patients’ clinical data that is already being collected by healthcare providers and systems during the registration process at emergency departments (or InstaCare in Utah).
RODS then analyses that data to provide an indication of clinical anomalies, 12 to 24 hours earlier than other systems.
The Utah Department of Health and local health department officials readily accepted the presence of RODS for the Games.