| Objectives: To clarify the characters, structures and functions of epidemiological surveillance system (ESS) on the base of information theory, and clear out its building process .Finally a theoretical system of this system was built with better scientificity and pragmaticality.Methods: The characters, structures and functions of ESS were deduced by character reasoning, syllogism reasoning of deduction reasoning and incomplete induction reasoning of induction reasoning in logics on the base of information system theory; ESS was divided into four functional subsystems with systemic dividing method.Results: (1) Sixteen characters of ESS were deduced from the angle of information theory, and the characters included importance, necessity, purposefulness, secular, succession and pursuit, legislation, effectiveness, reliability, sharability, openness, advancement and flexibility, integrality and representativeness, timeliness, security, confidentiality and exclusiveness, infotainment, sensitivity, user-friendliness, compatibility, controllability , fault-tolerance,and so on. (2)The functional structure of ESS included four subsystems, such as information collecting, information disposing, information storing and information transferring subsystems. The functions of ESS included information collecting, information disposing, information storing, information transferring, information searching and information utilizing. (3)The logic procedure of ESS founding involved system requirement analysis, system programming, system analysis, system design , system practice ,system operation management and evaluation. These phases interacted with and accelerated by one another, and they made up a lifecycle of ESS.Conclusions: In this study , the characters, structures, functions and founding process of ESS were explored, which embodied the flexible application of information theory on epidemiological surveillance. |
