The Information system is developed within a project of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), "Strengthening the response to avian influenza in Bulgaria", 07/0254/CO-BUL, with support from the Regional Office for Europe of the World Health Organization (WHO) and The Ministry of Health of Bulgaria (MoH).

The Information system represents a Web-based tool for sentinel surveillance of influenza and acute respiratory infections (ARI) in Bulgaria. It is used for collection and analysis of the incidence data in the cities that are district centers and for dissemination of the aggregated data to all levels and institutions, responsible for the preventive and control measures during the influenza epidemics. Using the historical data of weekly reported influenza and ARI rate the system determine the percentile-based intensity levels.

The Information system is a database Web application and the end user needs only a standard browser as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari to access it.

The functions of the information system are:

• To collect the data. There are several levels of input data which use different input forms, depending on user role and function within the influenza and ARI surveillance system;
• To validate the data. It is performed according to the procedures determined by the National centre of infectious and parasitic diseases (NCIPD);
• To analyze the data. A variety of aggregated daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and other periodically reports as well as dynamic graphs are generated automatically, showing the national and the regional influenza and ARI incidence rate dynamics by different age groups;
• To manage users and their access rights. It is performed according to their responsibilities within the influenza and ARI surveillance system.

The main users of the information system are:

• The NCIPD, the Department Epidemiology and Communicable Disease Surveillance responsible for Surveillance of influenza and ARI, including avian influenza;
• The Regional Health Inspectorates, the Departments "Communicable Diseases control" responsible for the collection, analysis and timely dissemination of the influenza and ARI incidence data at regional level;
• The MoH, the Department "Public Health" responsible for decision making and control measures during influenza epidemics in Bulgaria and the WHO, the Department monitoring the occurrence of influenza epidemics, including avian influenza in the European region;
• The public, which has access to the current epidemiological bulletin and the dynamic graph of the total influenza and ARI incidence.