The Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) is a nationwide public health scheme of the Government of India, managed by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. It was launched in November 2004 as the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project with assistance from the World Bank. The IDSP was created to strengthen disease surveillance and establish a decentralized, state-based system for epidemic-prone diseases, addressing the limitations of previous efforts like the National Surveillance Program for Communicable Diseases (NSPCD 1997–2002). Its core purpose is the early detection of warning signals so that timely and effective public health actions can be initiated.
The mechanism is a three-tiered, decentralized structure with surveillance units established at the Central, State, and District levels. The Central Surveillance Unit (CSU) is integrated with the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in Delhi. Data on epidemic-prone diseases is collected using three specified reporting formats: 'S' (syndromic/suspected cases), 'P' (presumptive cases), and 'L' (laboratory confirmed cases). When a rising trend is detected, trained Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) are deployed to investigate and control the outbreak. The IDSP is integrated under the umbrella of the National Health Mission (NHM). It also connects to the framework of the International Health Regulations (2005) and supports the surveillance of diseases declared notifiable under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897. A significant recent change is the launch of the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) on April 5, 2021, which is a web-enabled, near-real-time electronic system that replaced the older weekly reporting with real-time data collection, including via mobile applications.