About BioSense

In late 2007, the CDC accelerated efforts to redesign the program in order to improve collaboration with federal, state and local public health stakeholders and leverage recent advances in informatics. The BioSense program solicited input from stakeholders across the country to begin transitioning the program to meet our nation’s public health threats. As a result, BioSense has begun to evolve significantly through the adoption of recent knowledge and technological innovation.

The BioSense Program goal  to support a national surveillance network through which healthcare organizations, public health, Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), and other national health data sources are able to contribute to the picture of the health of the nation. To achieve its goal, the BioSense program facilitates activity in three areas:

• Local and state public health coordination of data for surveillance
• Collaboration with partners to develop the workforce
Advances in science and technology

The BioSense program is much more than the application itself. As the technology for biosurveillance evolves, the science must grow as well. As a response to this need, CDC has funded a number of research grants, cooperative agreements, and Centers of Excellence to explore new technologies. These advances provide a better understanding of the BioSense data and the ability to quickly and accurately identify the nature of spikes in the data. In addition, CDC has granted contracts for partners to explore the most efficient method of using data from HIEs for biosurveillance. These advances will serve to enhance the understanding and utility of BioSense.

Its mission is to comprehensively monitor the healthcare system of the United States, collecting data on the scope and severity of acute health threats to the public health, and supporting national, state, and local responses to those threats. Its core principles of collaboration, transparency, and innovation form its philosophical and strategic foundation. The implementation of core principles will support the mission and vision of the BioSense program. The core principles are:

• Collaboration: To strengthen public health informatics capacity and capability, promote community participation, encourage knowledge sharing, and enhance stakeholder value



• Transparency: To improve system operations, ensure operational excellence and leverage existing state, regional, and community level capabilities and solutions



• Innovation: To advance the research and practice of biosurveillance and informatics

BioSense is a national program intended to improve the nation’s capabilities for conducting real-time biosurveillance, and enabling health situational awareness through access to existing data from healthcare organizations across the country.