Retrospective Analysis and Design of Cusum Control Chart for Detection of Outbreaks of Infectious Diseases

Abstract

Cumulative sum (CUSUM) quality control charts are widely used in manufacturing industries to understand process performance , set standard for the operational parameters, monitoring the standard and continual monitoring for improvement. Its application in non-manufacturing sectors ( service inductries, quality health care delivery etc) do not differ significantly. CUSUM charts which use all the available information has advantage over Shewart chart in overcoming the problem of individual plot and can be used to capture a small shift from the reference value. In this paper , a retrospective analysis was first carried out to provide diagnostic informationabout the process to be monitored. CUSUM scheme was then designed and implemented on hospital data obtained from research and Record Unit of Ahmadu Bello Teaching hospital (ABUTH), Kaduna Nigeria. The applicability of this technique on infectious disease data further confirms a vital role quality control charts can play in medical process as well.