As a participant in the National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP), the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) has worked closely with our statewide Health Information Exchange (HIE) and National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) technical staff to collect and transmit emergency department (ED) data from eligible hospitals (EHs) to the NSSP. Our goal is to ensure complete and accurate data using a multi-step process beginning with pre-production data and continuing after EHs are sending live data to production.

Objective

The Department of Defense conducts syndromic surveillance of health encounter visits of Military Health System (MHS) beneficiaries. Providers within the MHS assign up to 10 diagnosis codes to each health encounter visit. The diagnosis codes are grouped into syndrome and sub-syndrome categories. On October 1, 2015, the Health and Human Services-mandated transition from ICD- 9-CM to ICD-10-CM required evaluation of the syndrome mappings to establish a baseline of syndrome rates within the DoD. The DoD data within the BioSense system currently utilizes DoD ESSENCE syndrome mappings.

BioSense was launched in 2003 by CDC with its primary aim to establish an integrated system of nationwide public health surveillance for the early detection and prompt assessment of potential bioterrorism-related syndromes or other public health emergencies. With the release of CDC’s Surveillance Strategy, BioSense evolved into the National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP).