BioSense

BioSense Program and Mandate

BioSense is a program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that tracks health problems as they evolve and provides public health officials with the data, information and tools they need to better prepare for and coordinate responses to safeguard and improve the health of the American people.

Mandated in the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, the CDC BioSense Program was launched in 2003 to establish an integrated national public health surveillance system for early detection and rapid assessment of potential bioterrorism-related illness.

BioSense 2.0

BioSense 2.0 protects the health of the American people by providing timely insight into the health of communities, regions, and the nation by offering a variety of features to improve data collection, standardization, storage, analysis, and collaboration.

Using the latest technology, BioSense 2.0 integrates current health data shared by health departments from a variety of sources to provide insight on the health of communities and the country. By getting more information faster, local, state, and federal public health partners can detect and respond to more outbreaks and health events more quickly.

BioSense 2.0 is community controlled and user driven. This approach ensures that it remains flexible and responsive to users’ changing needs and that the development and evolution of BioSense 2.0 will continue in phases after November.

CDC funded the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) to host this new environment and, in coordination with in coordination with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), and International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS), facilitates a governance body of state and local health stakeholders that represents all BioSense 2.0 users.

BioSense 2.0 Approach

In FY 2010, CDC started redesigning the BioSense program based on input and guidance from our local, state, and federal partners.  The goal of the redesign effort is to be able to provide nationwide and regional situational awareness for all-hazard health-related threats (beyond bioterrorism) and to support national, state, and local responses to those threats.  This support was achieved through improved internal contract management, with savings being applied directly to increase funding to support state and local health departments for syndromic surveillance efforts.  Through these savings the BioSense program awarded funding to 16 states, 4 cities and Washington D.C..

CDC plans to continue to examine the stakeholder requirements and needs assessment, determine limitations of participating sites, assess Meaningful Use readiness, and work collaboratively with external partners on how best to meet the needs of state and local health departments.

BioSense 2.0 Activities

By integrating local and state-level information, CDC will provide a timely and cohesive picture at the regional (i.e., multistate) and national levels and improve BioSense's utility.
The key components of the BioSense program redesign:

• Help build health monitoring infrastructure and workforce capacity where needed at the state, local, tribal, and territorial levels
• Facilitate the interchange of information that can be used to coordinate responses and monitor health-related outcomes routinely and during an event
• Retain the original purpose of BioSense to detect and characterize events (or health-related threats) early by building on state and local health departments systems and programs
• Expand the utility of BioSense data to multi-use [and all-hazard] beyond early event detection and to contribute information for:
• public health situational awareness
• routine public health practice
• improved health outcomes and public health
• Improve the ability to detect emergency health-related threats by supporting the enhancement of systems to signal alerts for potential problems
• Increasing local and state jurisdictions participation in BioSense
• Advances in science and technology

Translating Stakeholder Input Into Action Quickly

A new BioSense Redesign Collaboration Site, launched on September 1, 2010, is designed to encourage transparent information exchange among stakeholders and the BioSense Redesign team. It allows users to: (1) make recommendations regarding surveillance practice; (2) exchange ideas with one another and the BioSense Redesign team; and (3) follow the BioSense Redesign project as it progresses.

Visit biosenseredesign.org to access the BioSense Redesign site. Please contact Taha A. Kass-Hout, MD, MS, at TKassHout@cdc.gov for questions related to the BioSense Program.