Since 2015, CDC’s Division of Health Informatics and Surveillance staff have conducted evaluations to provide information on the utility, functionality, usability and user satisfaction associated with the National Syndromic Surveillance Program’s BioSense Platform tools. The BioSense Platform tools include: 1) Access and Management Center (AMC), a tool that enables site administrators to manage users and data permissions; 2) Electronic Surveillance System for Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE), a software application that enables syndromic surveillance related data visualization and analysis; 3) Adminer, a tool that allows users to access site data on the datamart; and 4) Rstudio, an application that can be used for data analysis and visualization. The evaluation findings have informed activities that led to improvements in functionality, development or procurement of platform associated tools, and development of resource materials. In May 2018, NSSP conducted an evaluation with eight jurisdictions that participated in the first user acceptance testing (UAT) evaluations in 2015. The purpose of the evaluation was to assess the present status of utility, functionality, usability and user satisfaction of the tools on the BioSense Platform, and delineate progress since 2015.

Objective: To assess the present status of utility, functionality, usability and user satisfaction of the BioSense Platform.