Our Contribution
APL’s leadership in electronic disease surveillance, both at home and abroad, is making a difference on the front lines of protecting the health of a population. Many state and local health departments have employed APL’s Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE). With the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adopting ESSENCE as an analysis and visualization tool for the National Syndromic Surveillance Program—and using it to track developing situations from the opioid crisis to Zika outbreaks—we are laying the groundwork for a fully integrated national surveillance picture. Internationally, with our Suite for Automated Global Electronic bioSurveillance (SAGES), nations with limited resources are gaining capacity to conduct disease surveillance—a capability critical to providing early warnings for their populations as well as enhancing the safety of forward-deployed U.S. military personnel.