Briefs

Bio-IT World reports (November 1, 2002) that U.S. military medical researchers are using a computer-based biosurveillance system that collects data from patients at military medical facilities to detect outbreaks of infectious disease as well as incidences of bioterrorism. The Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE) has been in use since 1999, initially collecting and interpreting data submitted daily by doctors and other health care professionals at military treatment facilities in the Washington, D.C., area. But its role began expanding after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and is now gathering data from military medical facilities worldwide as well as other health care sources, said Lt. Col. Julie Pavlin, a researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. ESSENCE helped officials detect an outbreak of 138 cases of the Norwalk virus in San Diego early this year among troops at a training facility.

Here is the story from Bio-IT World.