Author(s)

Tomoaki Ueno^1*, Tamie Sugawara², Yasushi Ohkusa², Hirokazu Kawanohara³, Miwako Kamei⁴

¹ORCA Management Organization Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.
²National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan.
³EM Systems Co. Ltd., Osaka, Japan.
⁴School of Pharmacy, Nihon University, Chiba, Japan.

Background: “Online Receipt Computer Advantage” (ORCA) surveillance, an online medical claim service produced and provided freely to medical facilities by the Japan Medical Association, has been available for public use since 2010. However, its preciseness has not been evaluated. The object of the present study is comparison with ORCA surveillance and prescription surveillance (PS), which is the most reliable daily surveillance for influenza nationwide in Japan, and evaluating preciseness of ORCA surveillance. Method: We specifically examined influenza as a targeted disease. We regarded PS as the gold standard daily real-time monitoring system for influenza nationwide and for each prefecture. This study assesses correlation and discrepancies between ORCA and PS results for influenza nationwide and by prefecture. Results: Nationwide, the correlation coefficient of PS and ORCA was 0.9653; the discrepancy rate was 27%. Among prefectures, results show that Mie and Fukui prefectures had two quite similar epidemic curves. Conclusion: Results demonstrate that ORCA surveillance is comparable to PS nationwide. However, some prefectures exhibited comparable results whereas others did not. ORCA surveillance cannot break down to the municipal level.

ORCA Surveillance, Prescription Surveillance, Influenza, Real-Time Daily Surveillance, Preciseness

Ueno, T. , Sugawara, T. , Ohkusa, Y. , Kawanohara, H. and Kamei, M. (2019) Retrospective Evaluation for ORCA Surveillance Comparison with Prescription Surveillance. Journal of Biosciences and Medicines, 7, 1-8. doi: 10.4236/jbm.2019.712001.