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ESSENCE II and the framework for evaluating syndromic surveillance systems
Joseph S Lombardo1, H Burkom, J Pavlin
1Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, 11100 Johns Hopkins Rd, Laurel, MD 20723, USA. Joe.Lombardo@jhuapl.edu
MMWR Supplements
|February 18, 2005
Summary
The Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics (ESSENCE II) effectively detects health events early. This syndromic surveillance system demonstrates a useful and cost-effective approach for public health surveillance.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Epidemiology
- Health Informatics
Background:
- The Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics (ESSENCE II) is a prototype system.
- It is designed for capturing and analyzing public health indicators.
- ESSENCE II aims for the early detection of disease outbreaks.
Purpose of the Study:
- To present a preliminary evaluation of the ESSENCE II system.
- The evaluation follows a framework established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
- This assessment focuses on the performance of ESSENCE II.
Main Methods:
- The evaluation addresses each major topic within the CDC framework.
- ESSENCE II captures data in various formats.
- It parses text strings into syndrome groupings and applies temporal and spatio-temporal outbreak-detection algorithms.
Main Results:
- ESSENCE II algorithms detected health events with a median delay of 1 day.
- This detection occurred after the earliest possible detection opportunity during a DARPA evaluation.
- The system demonstrated effective data parsing and algorithm application.
Conclusions:
- ESSENCE II demonstrated excellent performance against the CDC evaluation framework.
- The system is a useful and cost-effective method for early health event detection.
- ESSENCE II proves valuable for public health surveillance.