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ESSENCE

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.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

The VA has employed ESSENCE for health monitoring since 2006 [1]. Epidemiologists at the Office of Public Health (OPH) monitor the VA population at the national level. The system is also intended for facility-level monitoring to cover 152 medical centers, nearly 800 community-based outpatient clinics (CBOC), and other facilities serving all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. For the entire set of facilities and current syndrome groupings, investigation of the full set of algorithmic alerts is impractical for the group of monitors using ESSENCE. Signals of interest may be masked by the nationwide alert burden. Customized querying features have been added to ESSENCE, but standardization and IP training are required to assure appropriate use.

Objective

The objective was to adapt and tailor the alerting methodology employed in the Electronic Surveillance System for Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics (ESSENCE) used by Veterans Affairs (VA) for routine, efficient health surveillance by a small, VA headquarter medical epidemiology staff in addition to a nationwide group of infection preventionists (IPs) monitoring single facilities or facility groups.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

The electronic surveillance system for the early notification of community-based epidemics (ESSENCE) is the web-based syndromic surveillance system utilized by DHMH. ESSENCE utilizes a secure, automated process for the transfer of data to the ESSENCE system. Data sources in the Maryland ESSENCE system include emergency department (ED) chief complaints, poison control center calls, over-the-counter (OTC) medication sales, and pharmaceutical transaction data (for certain classes of anti-bacterial and anti-viral medication). All data sources have statewide coverage and are captured daily in near real-time fashion. OIT developed a web based application in conjunction with OP&R to allow the epidemiologists involved in the ESSENCE program to monitor and audit the transfer of this data. The application allows the user to indicate whether or not each data file has been consumed into ESSENCE for any date of the year. The user can edit these daily entries at any time to update the status of the data that has been received. The user may also query the database by data source, date, and date range to generate a report. The database also contains contact information for technical and infection control staff at the hospitals that participate in the ESSENCE program. Finally, the application can also generate reports that detail which users have logged into ESSENCE, when the log-in occurred, and which pages within ESSENCE were visited.

Objective

To describe the application and process developed by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) Office of Preparedness and Response (OP&R) and Office of Information Technology (OIT) for monitoring and auditing the transfer of syndromic surveillance data.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

Held on March 14, 2019.

During this 90-minute session, Aaron Kite-Powell, M.S., from CDC and Wayne Loschen, M.S., from JHU-APL provided updates on the NSSP ESSENCE platform and answered the community's questions on ESSENCE functions and features.

The Oregon ESSENCE team has developed a guide for other states to use to set up a web service link to their poison center and extract its data into ESSENCE. It contains advice based on Oregon’s experience in developing its link with its poison center and NDPS, a plug-&-play (almost) Rhapsody configuration file (and instructions) to install, and data dictionaries provided by NPDS.

The publication date is February 1, 2019.

Submitted by ctong on

In response to the threat of biologic terrorism and the resurgence of virulent forms of infectious diseases, technologic advances are being applied to disease surveillance. Syndromic surveillance systems have emerged to capture and analyze health-indicator data to identify abnormal health conditions and enable early detection of outbreaks. Given the limited public health experience with biologic terrorism and the variety of possible terrorism scenarios, the research community is exploring the application of advanced detection technology to prediagnostic syndromic data.

Submitted by elamb on

Presented December 4, 2018.

The Webinar, Introduction of SAS Studio Basics to the BioSense Platform, will include overviews, summaries, tips, tricks, and examples across a number of SAS topics on the BioSense Platform. Some of these topics will include the BioSense Platform SAS Pilot background and summary, the SAS Studio overview and setup, neat SAS features, code examples, and how to perform an API call from ESSENCE.

Presenters

In recent years, Washington State has experienced episodes of degraded air quality from wildfires burning within the state, as well as surrounding states and provinces. Wildfire smoke, particularly the high concentrations of small particulate matter generated by incomplete combustion, can lead to a number of minor as well as significant acute health effects, such as respiratory and cardiac-related issues. As a result, Washington State is developing methodology to monitor syndromic surveillance data for evidence of health impacts across Washington State during ongoing wildfires.

Submitted by Anonymous on

Free text queries are performed by ESSENCE users very often. And increasingly, those free text queries are incorporating negation terms that allow the users to find case definitions when certain terms are not present. This video attempts to explain some of the special cases where negation in free text queries may be confusing for users. The video will mention some features in ESSENCE that you may not be familiar with like the Explain Query button and Advanced Query Tool (AQT).

Submitted by elamb on
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