The decision as to whether an alarm (excess activity in syndromic surveillance indicators) leads to an alert (a public health response) is often based on expert knowledge. Expert-based approaches may produce faster results than automated approaches but could be difficult to replicate. Moreover, the effectiveness of a syndromic surveillance system could be compromised in the absence of such experts. Bayesian network structural learning provides a mechanism to identify and represent relations between syndromic indicators, and between these indicators and alerts. Their outputs have the potential to assist decision-makers determine more effectively which alarms are most likely to lead to alerts.