Gallagher Kathleen

BioSense is a national human health surveillance system for disease detection, monitoring, and situation awareness through near realtime access to existing electronic healthcare encounter information, including information from hospital emergency departments (EDs). MCM include antibiotics, antivirals, antidotes, antitoxins, vaccinations, nuclide-binding agents, and other medications. Although some MCM have been extensively evaluated and have FDA approval, many do not (1). Current FDA and CDC systems that monitor drug and vaccine safety have limited ability to monitor MCM safety, and in particular to conduct rapid assessments during an emergency.

Objective

To conduct an initial examination of the potential use of BioSense data to monitor and rapidly assess the safety of medical countermeasures (MCM) used for prevention or treatment of adverse health effects of biological, chemical, and radiation exposures during a public health emergency.

The practice of public health surveillance is evolving as electronic health records (EHRs) and automated laboratory information systems are increasing adopted, as new approaches for health information exchange are employed, and as new health information standards affect the entire cascade of surveillance information flow. These trends have been accelerated by the Federal program to promote the Meaningful Use of electronic health records, which includes explicit population health objectives. The growing use of Internet “cloud” technology provides new opportunities for improving information sharing and for reducing surveillance costs. Potential benefits include not only faster and more complete surveillance but also new opportunities for providing population health information back to clinicians. For public health surveys, new Internet-based sampling and survey methods hold the promise of complementing existing telephonebased surveys, which have been plagued by declining response rates despite the addition of cell-phone sampling. While new technologies hold promise for improving surveillance practice, there are multiple challenges, including constraints on public health budgets and the workforce. This panel will explore how PHSIPO is addressing these opportunities and challenges.

Objective

To provide updates on current activities and future directions for the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS), BioSense 2.0, and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and on the role of PHSIPO as the “home” at CDC for addressing cross-cutting issues in surveillance and informatics practice