ESSENCE receives and analyzes data for the Military Health System’s (MHS) 9 million beneficiaries resulting in approximately 90,000 daily outpatient and emergency department visits worldwide. In May 2008, MHS released ESSENCE Version 2.0, a system-wide upgrade which includes the following enhancements: improved system security, additional reporting and display capabilities, laboratory orders, radiology orders, and the ability for users to define their own syndrome groups.
Objective
As an evolving syndromic surveillance system, ESSENCE has recently undergone some significant improvements and new additional capabilities. We present three of these impactful enhancements and evaluate their added value to military public health and preventive medicine providers and system users. Specific Version 2.0 enhancements include: (1) laboratory orders (2) radiology orders and (3) the ability for users to create their own syndrome groups for outbreak classification and detection.