Governments Use JHU APL-Made Tool to Address COVID-19

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has distributed an existing device to help communities track the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease.

JHU APL said Wednesday its Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics, or ESSENCE, allows users to find trends and detect areas where the virus is active.

The Centers for Disease Control and other government entities across federal, state and local levels have employed the system to address the COVID-19 issue.

ESSENCE generates and processes data that helps officials make decisions on social distancing and mitigation of the virus’ movement across different places. The system employs algorithms to determine the occurrence of an outbreak.

“Especially in light of the fact that laboratory testing is behind, our system is being used to augment those tests,” said Wayne Loschen, an APL software engineer who serves as technical lead of the ESSENCE program.

APL commenced ESSENCE’s development in 1997 to monitor the spread of diseases via large volumes of processed data.