Abstract
In light of recent outbreaks of pertussis, the ability of Florida Department of Health''s (FDOH) Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE-FL) to detect emergent disease outbreaks was examined. Florida''s syndromic surveillance system, ESSENCE-FL, has the capacity to monitor reportable disease case data from Merlin, the Bureau of Epidemiology''s secure web-based reporting and epidemiologic analysis system. In this study we determine the utility of ESSENCE-FL system generated disease alerts originally designed for use with emergency department chief complaint data to reportable disease data to assist in timely detection of outbreaks to promote appropriate response measures.