Technical Updates

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Patching Schedule

  • January 17: NSSP vendor patches (Testing and Development) 12:00–8:00 AM ET
  • January 19: NSSP vendor patches (Onboarding and Production) 12:00–8:00 AM ET
  • February 23: NSSP vendor patches (Testing and Development) 12:00–8:00 AM ET
  • February 23: NSSP vendor patches (Onboarding and Production) 12:00–8:00 AM ET

NSSP Team’s 2023 Resolutions

How can we use all that we’ve learned to meet upcoming demands and prepare for future challenges? We canvassed our epis, analysts, and health scientists to compile a list of their technical resolutions for the New Year. Here’s an ambitious list of NSSP projects they’d like to focus on in 2023:

  • Work collaboratively across the NSSP Community of Practice to shape the future of respiratory disease surveillance. Highlight the usefulness of emergency department (ED) and laboratory data to track any respiratory illness—COVID-19, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and others.
  • Incorporate laboratory data into the NSSP data quality dashboard.
  • Collaborate with the community to assess the quality of data in the Production environment for completeness, validity, and timeliness. The quality of Production data can degrade over time for many reasons. (Hint: See our suggestions in Onboarding Updates.)
  • Collaborate with the community to update data use policies that will advance public health data modernization.
  • Improve the BioSense Platform cloud architecture and, as necessary, implement an alternative and more robust cloud architecture.
  • Modernize the ESSENCE user interface.
  • Expand data acquisition and improve data quality and usability. To do this, we’ll need to add facilities—particularly those that can help fill gaps in ED data. We will also need to improve our tools for monitoring quality, revise ED standards, and set up pilot tests.
  • Advance the integration of mortality data into the BioSense Platform.
  • Integrate use-case data from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) into the BioSense Platform. NNDSS is CDC’s program for conducting case surveillance.
  • Enhance local, state, and federal capacity for using NSSP data by providing continued surveillance of COVID-19, supporting the NSSP Community of Practice, and expanding the BioSense Platform’s offerings (e.g., develop syndromes, create dashboards, and make templates for reporting).
  • Continue development work on the RNSSP Package.
  • Be innovative…look to the future to advance surveillance science. Think “improved reporting across data sources” and “implementation of supervised and unsupervised machine learning.” The latter—machine learning—could help our community develop syndromes and improve how we practice syndromic surveillance.

AMC Maintenance Release Scheduled for January

Several improvements to the Access & Management Center (AMC) are scheduled for release in January 2023:

  • Of interest to all users: AMC will trigger an error message and require a password change if your password contains three or more consecutive characters from any part of your login, name, email address, or organization.
  • Of interest to site administrators and others with enhanced privileges:
    • When deleting a user group, the tables for “My Site User Groups” and “All Public User Groups” will no longer show the deleted user group.
    • The AMC will no longer require that a Facility be entered for new locations that are not currently onboarding.
    • The mortality data selection on the user profile form will be available only for sites where mortality data are available.
    • When a Data Access Rule is created with a future start date, the status will be “Suspend,” not “Draft.”
    • When creating a data access rule, apostrophes can be used in the rule name.
    • Sites going from onboarding to active status will be sent automatically to ESSENCE when they receive administrative approval.
    • The AMC will no longer send duplicate email reminders when a user’s password is expiring.
    • A new view in the AMC database will be available for automated Datamart application programming interface (API)-based access to User_Profile data.

Updates to NSSP ‘By the Numbers’ Show Sustained Growth

A description of the National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) can be found on our website, fact sheet, and infographic. We’ve recently updated “By the Numbers” and look forward to further expansion of facilities across NSSP in 2023:

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More than 6,200 health care facilities covering 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, contribute data to the BioSense Platform daily.

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Currently, 73% of the nation’s emergency departments contribute data to NSSP (or the BioSense Platform).

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Within 24 hours of a patient’s visit, data are available to NSSP for analysis.

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Over 6 million electronic health messages are received by the NSSP BioSense Platform every day.

Onboarding Updates: Production Data Quality in the New Year

When was the last time you looked at data quality? Often, site administrators and vendor staff focus on the quality of data in the Staging environment. But after a facility is initially onboarded, do you check data quality in the Production environment? Whether you rely on NSSP or use a local surveillance system, you must continually monitor data quality.

Over time, the quality of data in Production can degrade. There are many reasons, including vendor changes, software upgrades, and facility staff changes. Periodically, check your Production data for completeness, validity, and timeliness.

If problems are detected, ask facility staff or vendors for help with improving the quality. If no problems are detected, take the opportunity to touch base with the facility or vendor—they like receiving positive feedback, and you’ll get a chance to update your contacts.

Tools for learning about and checking Production data quality are available on the NSSP BioSense Platform:

If you have questions or need support, please submit an NSSP Service Desk ticket requesting assistance with Production data quality.

Article Added to Onboarding Web Page: “Does Active Really Mean ‘Active’?”

Site and NSSP staff use the Master Facility Table (MFT) to make sure data are mapped correctly in the BioSense Platform and can be easily identified when queried. But changes in Facility Status and Review Status aren’t always straightforward and easy to understand. To learn how the two “statuses” work together—and, more importantly, whether your data are being processed—read “Does Active Really Mean ‘Active’?” in the Onboarding section of the NSSP website.

While you’re there, check out the articles about routing mortality data, replication and the datamart, and reasons for onboarding new facilities.

Onboarding is a Collaborative Process
onboarding team at conference table

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.

Publication Updates

  • Release of the Data Quality (DQ) Dashboard User Manual, Version 2, is now scheduled for late February or early March.
    This revision serves as a guide to the revamped DQ Dashboard application. The dashboard’s user interface will now use grid cards to display graphical and tabular information. Grid cards are a user interface element of the dashboard that serve as “containers” to house any component of related data (selected filters, percent of data selected). Each dashboard page is a conglomerate of grid cards with a specific purpose. Site administrators can use the updated user interface to evaluate data flow, completeness, validity, and timeliness of submitted data.
  • The online publication How to Use RStudio with NSSP–ESSENCE APIs has been posted in the Knowledge Repository. This version includes the following updates:
    • An example that shows how an API can pull facility-level data quality metrics (coefficient of variation, discharge diagnosis informative [DDI], chief complaint [CCI], etc.).
    • A new section on session attribute IDs has been added to Tips and Tricks. A session attribute ID is an alias that ESSENCE automatically creates when a URL’s character count is too long.
    • A new API feature provides the ability to pull in the Chief Complaint/Discharge Diagnosis (CC/DD) Category table. ESSENCE users can pull an up-to-date list of ESSENCE CC/DD categories and underlying queries, eliminating the need to manually copy and paste queries into R Markdown documents that serve as fact sheets or summaries of existing categories.
    • An updated resource list including up-to-date links, applied epi resources, and new open-source material covering topics such as machine learning for text analysis in R, time series analysis, data.table and dplyr, and Quarto.