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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Lynn Steele, MS, Director, Jerome I. Tokars, MD, MPH, Blake Caldwell, MD, MPH, and Barry Rhodes, PhD. Division of Emergency Preparedness and Response, National Center for Public Health Informatics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road NE, Mailstop E-06, Atlanta, GA 30333, 404-498-6207, lvs6@cdc.gov

BioSense is a national program intended to improve the nation's capabilities for disease detection, monitoring, and real-time health situational awareness, the ability to monitor disease over time and geography. Routine public health surveillance and investigations involve the manual reporting of cases to public health agencies and phone calls to healthcare providers for more detailed patient chart information. In public health emergencies these methods can be slow and incomplete. BioSense is a CDC-developed and hosted web-based system accessing existing data from healthcare organizations across the country. BioSense surveillance methods address the need of public health at all levels for identification, tracking, and management of rapidly spreading naturally occurring events and potential bioterrorism events using advanced algorithms for data analysis.

The BioSense Real-Time Data Initiative will strengthen BioSense by emphasizing access to real-time clinically rich data from emergency departments, outpatient clinics, and other hospital settings, useful for both early event detection and health situational awareness. During an emergency event, once fully deployed, participating clinicians and local, state, and federal public health officials will have a real-time picture of how a community is affected. This information can help characterize and monitor an outbreak, and will be critical for appropriate and timely public health interventions. BioSense provides better coordination with public health, minimal impact on existing systems, and advancement of information technology.

Ten cities were recruited in 2005 for phase one and currently hospitals in these cities are being connected to BioSense. Recruitment is underway for this year's goal of 350 healthcare facilities.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of the session, participants will be able to
• Identify the need for the BioSense program;
• Describe the basic mechanisms of the BioSense program.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered