National Poison Data System

NPDS has more than 62 million exposure case records and product-specific data about more than 420,000 products going back to 1983. NPDS can track poison exposure outbreaks across the country and in many situations can initially detect them by automatically applying analysis algorithms or by using a methodological manual search paradigm in analyzing exposure call volume and clinical effect trends.  These methods can be utilized for all common poisonings and toxic environmental concerns, as well as a wide variety of non-common occurrences ranging from food or drug contamination to biological warfare agents.  The intent of these ongoing toxicosurveillance activities is to isolate and focus on events of public health significance.

Case data are continually uploaded to NPDS from all AAPCC member poison centers currently every eight minutes, providing a near real-time snapshot of poisoning conditions nationwide.

All AAPCC member poison centers use electronic health record collection systems with mandatory common data elements and reporting requirements. During normal AAPCC member poison center operations, data are entered by staff in real-time as cases are being managed.