OBJECTIVES:  To compare 2 surgical site infection (SSI) detection methods (conventional infection control (IC) v.s. business intelligence (BI)) from gallbladder surgery (CHOL) and colon surgery (COLO). METHODS:  IC method was conducted by infection control nurses. Patient’s record with CHOL (i.e. ICD-9 was 51.21) and COLO (i.e. ICD-9 was 45.03) were reviewed and SSI was evaluated by clinician and detected within 30 days after surgery. BI method was performed by data analyst using IBM Cognos® 10.2. Using the same ICD-9 to identify CHOL and COLO patients in 2014 and ICD-10 from California Department of Public Health (i.e. T81.4) was applied for detecting possible SSI events. Number of SSI events, accuracy and sensitivity from both methods were compared. RESULTS:  Nine hundred and twenty-four cases were identified, 562 CHOL and 362 COLO. BI method can identify 99.5% and 91.7% of cases, whereas IC method can identify 52.3% and 53.0% of cases. There are 31 events from both methods shown conflict data and were re-evaluated by infection control nurses and data analyst. Four of conflict events were changed. Only 453 (49.0%) validated-cases were used to compare both methods. SSI event detection in IC method shows higher accuracy and sensitivity. Accuracy of IC method is 100% for CHOL and 99.4% for COLO, while BI method was 97.3% and 86.4%, respectively. Sensitivity of IC method is 100% for CHOL and 96.9% for COLO, while BI method was 12.5% and 40.6%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS:  BI method can identify more surgery cases than IC method, but IC method is more suitable for SSI detection. Workload and time consumption may limit number of monitored cases and delay time of reporting in IC method. Appropriate ICD-10 codes list for SSI events and improvement of ICD-10 coding in hospital information system are required for more specific SSI event detection by BI method.