Sentinel separates person-level information from disease-specific investigation information. A patient record holds information about the person. Case and contact records describe their involvement in a surveillance investigation.
Cases and contacts share the same underlying table. The interface presents them differently to distinguish their roles in the investigation and the information required for each.
Investigation records link laboratory results, symptoms, exposures, classification, notes, attachments and tasks. Contact-to-case conversion changes how a record is represented while retaining relevant investigation information.
Supported operations include:
- Creating and updating patient, case and contact records.
- Reviewing linked investigation information.
- Identifying and reconciling duplicate patient records.
- Converting contacts to cases as evidence develops.
Patient and case addresses are stored separately to support current person-level information and historical analysis of individual investigations.