BioSense Program

The BioSense program tracks health problems in the United States as they evolve. It provides public health officials with the data, information, and tools needed to better prepare for and coordinate responses to safeguard and improve the health of Americans.

BioSense is the only public health tool that provides a picture of what is happening right now with any health condition, anywhere and everywhere in the country. BioSense pulls together information on emergency department visits and hospitalizations from multiple sources, including the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Department of Defense (DoD), and civilian hospitals around the country. The BioSense program works with state or local health departments that have agreed to share data from their own emergency department monitoring systems to collect data from civilian hospitals.

Analysis of data through BioSense provides insight into the health of communities across the country. Such data are vital to guide decision making and actions by public health agencies at local, regional, and national levels.

BioSense 2.0

The latest version, BioSense 2.0, launched in November 2011 makes several changes to improve the ability to protect the health of the U.S. population across the nation. This collaborative data exchange system allows users to track health issues as they evolve.

BioSense 2.0 was developed and is governed by an active collaboration of CDC, state and local health departments, and other public health partners. It is the first Department of Health and Human Services system to move completely to a distributed cloud computing environment.