The Biosurveillance Symposium will be held in conjunction with the annual Biodetection Technologies 2012 Conference in Washington, DC. The objective of the Biosurveillance Symposium is to bring together the biosurveillance community to begin a process of addressing the many shortfalls and requirements for biosurveillance. The community will seek to reach agreement, or consensus, on a national biosurveillance strategy which includes agency roles and responsibilities, standards, and required investments in technology and infrastructure. The scope of symposium will include and its discussions will address the following areas (not limited to):

• Inadequacy of state and local biosurveillance programs
• Interoperability between public health and healthcare institutions (will require investment)
• Interoperability between the many existing and future biosurveillance systems
• Must reach community consensus on the data and information that is important
• Must reach community consensus on what constitutes “actionable” biosurveillance information
• How to educate decision makers (decisions will have to be made with “less than perfect” information)
• Define agency roles and responsibilities for biosurveillance as it relates to human, animal, food and
environmental surveillance
• Must create an integrated – local to state to federal – national biosurveillance strategy
• Establish a biosurveillance enterprise
• Must identify and include all stakeholders
• Must guide systemic identification of risk
• Identify resources needed to eliminate or mitigate risks
• Funding strategy

For more information, please visit the Official Event Website.