In development for over fourteen years, ESSENCE is a disease surveillance system utilized by public health stakeholders at city, county, state, regional, national, and global levels. The system was developed by a team from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) with substantial collaborations with the US Department of Defense Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System (DoD GEIS), US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and numerous public health departments. This team encompassed a broad range of individuals with backgrounds in epidemiology, mathematics, computer science, statistics, engineering and medicine with significant and constant influence from many public health collaborators.
Objective
This talk will describe the history and events that influenced the design and architecture decisions of the Electronic Surveillance System for Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE)(1). Additionally, it will discuss the current functionality and capabilities of ESSENCE and the future goals and planned enhancements of the system.