BioSense Platform

At the core of CDC's National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) is its BioSense Platform. It provides public health officials a common cloud-based health information system with standardized tools and procedures to rapidly collect, evaluate, share, and store information.

Health officials can use the BioSense Platform to analyze and exchange syndromic data—improving their common awareness of health threats over time and across regional boundaries. They can exchange information faster and better coordinate community actions to protect the public’s health.

The BioSense Platform was developed through an active collaboration of CDC and other federal agencies, state and local health departments, and public health partners. The platform hosts an array of user-selected tools and has features that are continually being enhanced to reflect their needs.

Features

•   Operates in a Cloud Computing Environment

The NSSP’s BioSense Platform is the first Department of Health and Human Services system to move completely to a distributed cloud computing environment. Cloud computing gives participating health departments easily managed on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. With distributed cloud computing, users control their portion of the cloud and how they share data. By using common resources readily available on the BioSense Platform (e.g., networks, servers, software, tools, and storage), users have limited need for additional IT support. Users of the BioSense Platform benefit through efficiencies gained, cost reductions, and information-sharing capabilities.

Also, the BioSense Platform offers local and state users free secure data storage space, an easy-to-use data display dashboard, and, most importantly, a shared environment where they can collaborate and exchange knowledge of syndromic surveillance. The cloud computing environment is overseen jointly by local, state, and federal public health representatives.

•  Allows Data Sharing across Jurisdictional Lines

The BioSense Platform hosts the only public health surveillance system that enables state and local health departments and CDC to quickly share health information across city, county, or state jurisdictions.

The BioSense Platform provides the tools needed to aggregate syndromic data from healthcare organizations across the nation. And it allows health officials to put these data in context—for example, by allowing comparison of data from people obtaining healthcare to be analyzed along with other public health data sources (i.e., school and business absentee data, poison control reports, social media data).

As part of the National Syndromic Surveillance Program, state and local health departments sign a data use agreement (DUA). The DUA allows them, along with CDC, to share data to conduct public health surveillance activities during emergencies and as part of significant events such as presidential inaugurations, Super Bowl football games, or for any local, regional, or national event.

•  Helps State and Local Health Departments Meet Meaningful Use Requirements

The tools hosted on the cloud-based BioSense Platform increase the capacity of state and local health departments to support Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Meaningful Use programs that expand the use of electronic health records. The BioSense Platform gives health departments a common electronic platform for collecting, storing, and sharing syndromic surveillance data, such as signs, symptoms and diagnoses of illness or injury. Syndromic surveillance is a system for collecting and analyzing medical data to validate and monitor harmful effects of exposures to diseases and hazardous conditions. Quick access to timely health data helps state and local health departments implement public health interventions faster.