Technical Tips and Training
Welcome to the NSSP Technical Tips page, where you’ll find helpful tips, tricks, and training for working with BioSense Platform tools such as ESSENCE, Adminer, Access & Management Center, and R Studio Professional.
NSSP–ESSENCE Tips and Training
- Free-text Coding Article Series—how to write ESSENCE free-text queries:
Part 1. Wildcards
Part 2. Underscores_and Brackets [ ]
Part 3. Inclusionary Terms
Part 4. Exclusion Terms and Parentheses
Part 5. A “Starter” Fall-related Injury Query and Examples of Complex Queries
Part 6. Wrapping Things Up
- ESSENCE Online Trainingexternal icon
Six self-paced modules instruct and assess your understanding of concepts being presented. Topics include overviews of ESSENCE, syndromic surveillance, basic and advanced ESSENCE system components, ESSENCE Chief Complaint Processor, and ESSENCE alerting algorithms. Learn how to perform routine tasks such as create queries and analyze data using multiple visualization types. - ESSENCE Training on Using Queriesexternal icon, webinar led by Wayne Loschen of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
- NSSP ESSENCE Training at PHI Conference pdf icon[PDF]
ESSENCE Queries
April and May 2020
A key feature of NSSP–ESSENCE is its ability to use free-text definitions across different fields to generate custom queries. The syndromic surveillance community can use this feature to develop and refine category definitions and to identify and respond to public health events that may not be apparent in established categorical definitions (i.e., syndromes, subsyndromes, and Chief Complaint and Discharge Diagnosis [CCDD] categories).
This word cloud summarizes free-text and coded values that epidemiologists and data analysts queried in ESSENCE during April and May 2020. We created it by using the Wordcloud2 package in RStudio. The relative size of the terms suggests the frequency of use in a query. NSSP super administrators can query ESSENCE usage logs to learn what queries are run nationwide and how long they take to complete.
