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Australian Sentinel Practice Research Network

The Research and Health Promotion Unit of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners operates the Australian Sentinel Practice Research Network. ASPREN is a national network of general practitioners that report on a number of conditions each week. The aim of ASPREN is to provide an indicator of the burden of disease in the primary care setting and to detect trends in consultation rates.

There were approximately 120 general practitioners participating in the scheme from all States and Territories in 2000. Approximately 75 per cent of these are located in metropolitan areas and the remainder are in rural areas. There were on average 5,000 consultations each week.

In 2000, 14 conditions were being monitored by the ASPREN management committee, and five of these conditions related to communicable diseases. These were influenza, chickenpox, gastroenteritis, gastroenteritis with stool culture and ADT immunisations. In total there were 392,896 consultations reported to ASPREN of which 9,005 (2.3%) were of communicable diseases related conditions. The majority of communicable diseases reported were gastroenteritis (4,000 presentations, 44% of the total), followed by influenza (2,481 presentations, 28%), ADT immunisations (2,005 presentations, 22%) and chickenpox (583 presentations, 6%) respectively. The weekly reporting of influenza as a rate per 1,000 consultations are shown in Figure 58. Presentations with symptoms of influenza-like illnesses peaked in the Winter months (week 36).

Figure 58. ASPREN Communicable disease surveillance presentations to GPs, 1999



This article was published in Communicable Diseases Intelligence Volume 26, No 2, June 2002