A large part of the applied research on syndromic surveillance targets seasonal epidemics, e.g. influenza, winter vomiting disease, rotavirus and RSV, in particular when dealing with preclinical indicators, e.g. web traffic. The research on local outbreak surveillance is more limited. Two studies of teletriage data (NHS Direct) have shown positive and negative results respectively. Studies of OTC pharmacy sales have reported similar equivocal performance. As far as we know, no systematic comparison of data sources with respect to multiple point-source outbreaks has so far been published.