The Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics, launched in 2003, facilitates force health protection by gathering near real-time health information for Military Health System beneficiaries worldwide. The system allows for the systematic querying of millions of outpatient medical encounter records and laboratory results to identify health events of interest, encompassing infectious diseases, injuries, mental health concerns, and illnesses stemming from environmental factors (such as contaminants or CBRN agents).

This process supports biosurveillance and ESSENCE incorporates automated algorithms designed to detect increases in health events that could be significant from a public health perspective, thereby enabling the prompt initiation of public health investigations into potential outbreaks.

By providing situational awareness and supporting data-driven public health decision-making and interventions against public health threats, ESSENCE directly contributes to the MHS Force Health Protection mission of maintaining readiness. The system is currently managed by the Enterprise Intelligence & Data Solutions.

The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division, the Service-specific force health protection commands, and medical treatment facilities worldwide use ESSENCE to:

• Detect outbreaks early by reviewing automated data alerts for increases that may indicate the need to initiate a public health investigation.
• Conduct syndromic surveillance to detect public health threats prior to laboratory diagnosis.
• Monitor trends in various health events of public health interest.
• Enhance case finding for health events, including diseases that may not be well-described.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of control measures during outbreaks or health events overall by displaying data trends over time.
• Generate visualizations and data tables that summarize trends for specific health events that can be included in reports and communications.
• Create dashboards that facilitate rapid review of data for health events of interest.
• Develop custom queries for health events of interest within minutes.
• Access 5 years of historical clinical and epidemiologic data for MHS beneficiaries.

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