Objective The objective of this project is to advance the science of biosurveillance by providing a user curated cataloging system, to be used across health department and other users, that advances daily surveillance operations by better characterizing three key issues in available surveillance systems: duplication in biosurveillance activities; differing perspectives and analyses of the same ...

In this paper we introduce a new spatio-temporal methodology for biosurveillance entitled the Repeated Two-sample Rank (RTR) procedure. It is designed to sequentially incorporate information from individual observations and thus can operate on data in real-time as it arrives into an automated biosurveillance system. In addition, upon a signal of a possible outbreak, the methodology suggests a w...

BACKGROUND The establishment of robust biosurveillance capabilities is an important component of the U.S. strategy for identifying disease outbreaks, environmental exposures and bioterrorism events. Currently, U.S. Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) perform biosurveillance independently. This article describes a joint VA/DoD biosurveillance project at North Chicago-VA Medica...

Objective The National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Chemical and Biological Technologies Department (DTRA J9 CB) have partnered to codevelop the Biosurveillance Ecosystem (BSVE), an emerging capability that aims to provide a virtual, customizable analyst workbench that integrates health and non-health data. This partnership promotes engagem...

Novel and Nontraditional Data Streams: Where Do They Fit into Biosurveillance Action? Laura Streichert*1, Aaron Kite-Powell2, Timothy J. Dasey2, Richard Hopkins3, 1, Courtney Corley4 and Steve Bennett5 1International Society for Disease Surveillance, Brighton, MA, USA; 2MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA, USA; 3University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA; 4Pacific Northwest National Laborato...

Introduction Spurred by recent advances in PH informatics, the implementation of the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Records Incentive Programs (Meaningful Use), and the opportunities provided by the availability of the redesigned BioSense program, SyS has become an increasingly important component of the biosurveillance enterprise. Knowing how and when jurisdictions use SyS, as well as...

Over the past 10 years, US health security has been threatened by a series of infectious disease events: the 2009 influenza outbreak, the emergence of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and the rapid spread of Zika virus throughout the Americas. In each of these events, inadequate information has delayed initial detection of the outbreak, and a lack of u...

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Central Asia is a vast geographic region that includes five former Soviet Union republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The region has a unique infectious disease burden, and a history that includes Silk Road trade routes and networks that were part of the anti-plague and biowarfare programs in the former Soviet Union. Post-Soviet Union biosurveillance resea...