[1] Its intended purpose was as an integrated nationwide health surveillance system to catch disease outbreaks and bioterrorism events such as the anthrax scare were key motivations for its development.
[3] Moreover, early versions of the system lacked uptake in part due to reluctance of hospital leaders to provide information directly to the government.
The key components of the BioSense program redesign are to: [7] Mandated in the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness Response Act of 2002, the CDC BioSense Program was launched in 2003 to establish an integrated national public health surveillance system for early detection and rapid assessment of potential bioterrorism-related illness.
[7] By November 2011, the Redesigned BioSense (or BioSense 2.0) will develop a community-controlled environment (architecturally distributed in a cloud-based model) governed by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), in coordination with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), and International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS).
[citation needed] The cloud-based BioSense 2.0 environment allows State and Local health departments to access data that will support potential expansions of their syndromic surveillance systems under the Meaningful Use program.