BackgroundSurveillance of health care-associated infections is an essential component of infection prevention programs, but conventional systems are labor intensive and performance dependent. ObjectiveTo develop an automatic surveillance and classification system for health care-associated bloodstream infection (HABSI), and to evaluate its performance by comparing it with a conventional infection control personnel (ICP)-based surveillance system. MethodsWe developed a Web-based system that was integrated into the medical information system of a 2200-bed teaching hospital in Taiwan. The system automatically detects and classifies HABSIs. ResultsIn this study, the number of computer-detected HABSIs correlated closely with the number of HABSIs detected by ICP by department (n=20; r=.999 P