Essence Desktop Edition; A Self-Contained Disease Surveillance Application

Background: ESSENCE (Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics) is used to monitor population health and detect disease outbreaks. ESSENCE collects and analyzes data and uses anomaly detection algorithms to flag unusually high disease indicator counts.  This type of functionality is also needed in areas where web access is limited.  We developed the ESSENCE Desktop Edition (EDE) to meet this need.  It offers a self-contained disease surveillance tool that can be deployed efficiently on a desktop or laptop computer at any location.  EDE mimics the flow and functionality of web-based ESSENCE. 

Method: EDE uses the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP).  This is a customizable platform built with software units called ‘plugins’ that supports modular development. The EDE is developed to support a wide variety of user needs ‘out of the box’.  This includes configuration for different data sources and user performed queries on that data.  The EDE provides results in a format similar to the ESSENCE web application.  It includes graphs, charts, detailed data on individual illness reports, as well as geographic maps of location of individual illness reports.

Results: The initial deployment of EDE is as an add-in module attached to the national disease surveillance system in the Philippines called the Surveillance Tool for Analysis, Management, and Reporting data (STAMR).  In this instance, STAMR will be used to monitor the temporal trend of diseases that are officially notifiable in the Philippines.

Conclusion: EDE is an easily deployable, upgradeable and extendable stand-alone desktop application that provides similar functionality to the current web-based ESSENCE application.  EDE users can configure the system specifically for the variables included in their database.  They then have access to a robust core set of features that can be easily extended and upgraded.