Technical Updates
AMC Release 1.6.1 Implemented
Access & Management Center (AMC) release 1.6.1 was implemented during the April patching window. This minor release provided a fix to the Edit Multiple Facilities function through batch upload in the Master Facility Table tab.
Minor Fix Made to Knowledge Repository
In our continuing search for vulnerabilities, we became aware of a minor issue with the Rating module within the Knowledge Repository. This module provided flexible voting widgets for comments (Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down, etc.), but we removed it in early April to adhere to CDC’s cybersecurity guidelines.
Unexpected Outage in Onboarding Replication
On Thursday, April 21, 2022, an unexpected outage caused the Onboarding Datamart to be out of sync until Tuesday, April 26, 2022. Replication was restarted and is now current.
Additional monitoring has been implemented to notify the NSSP support team immediately if this event reoccurs. If you analyzed onboarding data between these dates in April, consider reevaluating your data.
Publication Updates
A number of quick start guides and user manuals are in review. We anticipate that these will be published in June.
The National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) has two core websites:
- NSSP Community of Practice website, sponsored by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE)
- NSSP website, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
These are the only public-facing NSSP Internet resources. However, several applications and analytic tools are available to authenticated users of both AMC and ESSENCE web applications (available on BioSense Platform). They generate outgoing emails with an @syndromicsurveillance.org return address.
The currently authorized sender addresses are:
- amc@syndromicsurveillance.org,
- biosenseplatform@syndromicsurveillance.org,
- dqadm@syndromicsurveillance.org,
- essence@syndromicsurveillance.org, and
- system@syndromicsurveillance.org.
NSSP will send some email directly from nssp@cdc.gov. But if you receive an email from other senders purporting to be an NSSP resource, please view the email as possible spam, spoofing, or phishing attempts. Please follow your information technology department guidelines for reporting junk or possibly malicious emails.
The NSSP onboarding team will work with your health department, facility, vendor for electronic health records (EHR) or heath information exchange (HIE) to transmit syndromic surveillance data from internal medical record systems to the NSSP Biosense Platform. If you represent an HIE, EHR vendor, or hospital and want to participate in the NSSP, please contact nssp@cdc.gov.
If you’re already an NSSP participant and need onboarding assistance, please contact the Service Desk.
For site and facility onboarding guides, job aids, articles and more onboarding resources, visit NSSP’s Onboarding webpage.
