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. 2017 Jul/Aug;132(1_suppl):7S-11S.
doi: 10.1177/0033354917706954.

The Evolution of BioSense: Lessons Learned and Future Directions

Deborah W Gould  1 , David Walker  1 , Paula W Yoon  1
Affiliations

The Evolution of BioSense: Lessons Learned and Future Directions

Deborah W Gould et al. Public Health Rep. 2017 Jul/Aug.

Abstract

The BioSense program was launched in 2003 with the aim of establishing a nationwide integrated public health surveillance system for early detection and assessment of potential bioterrorism-related illness. The program has matured over the years from an initial Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-centric program to one focused on building syndromic surveillance capacity at the state and local level. The uses of syndromic surveillance have also evolved from an early focus on alerts for bioterrorism-related illness to situational awareness and response, to various hazardous events and disease outbreaks. Future development of BioSense (now the National Syndromic Surveillance Program) includes, in the short term, a focus on data quality with an emphasis on stability, consistency, and reliability and, in the long term, increased capacity and innovation, new data sources and system functionality, and exploration of emerging technologies and analytics.

Keywords: Biosense; emergency department data; public health surveillance; syndromic surveillance.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure.
Figure.
Evolution of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) BioSense public health surveillance system, 2002-2016. Abbreviations: ED, emergency department; ESSENCE, Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics; NSSP, National Syndromic Surveillance Program; VA/DoD, Department of Veterans Affairs/Department of Defense.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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