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Privacy Impact Assessment Form
v 1.47.2
Status Draft

Form Number

F-98316

Form Date

Question

Answer

1

OPDIV:

CDC

2

PIA Unique Identifier:

P-2921661-251279

2a Name:

10/9/2015 1:49:46 PM

BioSense (BioSense)
General Support System (GSS)
Major Application

3

Minor Application (stand-alone)

The subject of this PIA is which of the following?

Minor Application (child)
Electronic Information Collection
Unknown

3a

Identify the Enterprise Performance Lifecycle Phase
of the system.

Operations and Maintenance
Yes

3b Is this a FISMA-Reportable system?

4

Does the system include a Website or online
application available to and for the use of the general
public?

5

Identify the operator.

6

Point of Contact (POC):

7

Is this a new or existing system?

8

Does the system have Security Authorization (SA)?

8a Date of Security Authorization

No
Yes
No
Agency
Contractor
POC Title

IT Specialist

POC Name

Alan Davis

POC Organization CSELS/DHIS/ISB
POC Email

ald7@cdc.gov

POC Phone

404-498-6209
New
Existing
Yes
No

1/15/2015 12:00:00 AM

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11 Describe the purpose of the system.

BioSense is a national syndromic surveillance system funded
by the CDC to collect information on emergency departments
(EDs) visits and hospitalizations from multiple sources
including the Department of Veteran Affairs, the Department
of Defense, and civilian hospitals. The BioSense program works
in collaboration with participating state and local health
departments that have agreed to share data from their own ED
monitoring systems to collect information from civilian
hospitals. In addition, data from large national labs on tests,
orders and results, and pharmaceutical prescription data are
included in BioSense.
The information will be used nationwide and regionally for
situational awareness for all hazard health threats (beyond
bioterrorism or early event detection) and to support national,
state, and local responses to those threats.

Describe the type of information the system will
collect, maintain (store), or share. (Subsequent
12
questions will identify if this information is PII and ask
about the specific data elements.)
Provide an overview of the system and describe the
13 information it will collect, maintain (store), or share,
either permanently or temporarily.
14 Does the system collect, maintain, use or share PII?

15

Indicate the type of PII that the system will collect or
maintain.

The data includes location, number of persons involved,
symptoms, and outcomes of various disease outbreaks in the
nation.
The BioSense program works in collaboration with
participating state and local health departments that have
agreed to share data from their own ED monitoring systems to
Yes
No
Social Security Number

Date of Birth

Name

Photographic Identifiers

Driver's License Number

Biometric Identifiers

Mother's Maiden Name

Vehicle Identifiers

E-Mail Address

Mailing Address

Phone Numbers

Medical Records Number

Medical Notes

Financial Account Info

Certificates

Legal Documents

Education Records

Device Identifiers

Military Status

Employment Status

Foreign Activities

Passport Number

Taxpayer ID
age, gender, race, zip code and city of the patient making
the visit; and medical information about the visit, including
the patient class, chief compliant, triage notes, diagnosis
text and codes, patient temperature and pulse

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Employees
Public Citizens
16

Indicate the categories of individuals about whom PII
is collected, maintained or shared.

Business Partners/Contacts (Federal, state, local agencies)
Vendors/Suppliers/Contractors
Patients
Other

17 How many individuals' PII is in the system?

18 For what primary purpose is the PII used?

1,000,000 or more
The Medical Record Number (MRN) is used to assign a “Unique
Patient ID” to a patient event record. The Unique Patient ID is
then used in forming a “key”, the “Unique Visiting ID”. The
Unique Visiting ID reflects a concatenation of the Facility ID,
the Unique Patient ID, and the date (yyyymmdd) of visit.
The Unique Visiting ID is used to associate all related
messages/records for the same patient event.
-----------The Date of Birth is currently used in the algorithm applied to
establish the “Patient Age”. The Patient Age is set by first
attempting to calculate the number of years between the
Patient Date of Birth, and the Patient Visit Date. If that value
cannot be established (e.g., DOB is missing or in incorrect
format), then the “Reported Patient Age” that is included in the
incoming message is used if not NULL, otherwise the
“Calculated Age” that is included in the incoming message is
used if not NULL. Note that some local syndromic surveillance
reporting laws disallow DOB and others require DOB to be
reported. Again our system has to support all possibilities
across the range of public health departments in the country.
--------The Chief Complaint is used in algorithms that parse the text
and categorize the Chief Complaint into one or more
syndromic categories of interest. These syndromic categories,
also known as “bins” total over 100 categories including
“Fever”, “Influenza like illness”, “Injury”, etc...
A patient event may be reflected in multiple messages/records
for the same person/same event, and may have Chief
Complaint(s) that match one or more syndromic categories.
The system leverages the Unique Visiting ID to associate the
syndromic categories with the same patient event. These data
are then use in statistical algorithms to produce signals should
the data reveal an unusual spike in one or more syndromic
categories.

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19

Describe the secondary uses for which the PII will be
used (e.g. testing, training or research)

The MRN can be used to crosswalk patient events with
multiple visit numbers. It is recommended that data providers
submit the patient medical record number to facilitate
identification of the patient, in the event of a required followup investigation. This is a function supported for local health
departments who are using our system as their primary
system. It is not for CDC to use in this manner without
expressly being asked to do so in order to assist the local
health department. Without the medical record number, the
work required to follow-up on the records of interest greatly
increases on the data provider and may cause unacceptable
delays in public health response. In addition, the medical
record number may aid in record de-duplication efforts and
may often aid in the resolution of apparent transcription errors.
--------The Date of Birth can be used in data quality assurance checks.
For example, the Date of Birth for multiple visit records
containing the same Unique Patient ID should be static.
Additionally, the Date of Birth can be used to assess accuracy
of other alternate data elements containing Age such as the
reported age and calculated age are sometimes updated to
reflect the patient’s current age, and not the age at the time of
event. This may happen if update messages are sent in for a
patient event that took place in the past, where the age sent in
the update reflects the current age and not the age at the time
of the event.
That said, some areas are prohibited to send date of birth and
rely on including the reported and/or calculated age in the
incoming message.
----------The Chief Complaint can be used to search for specific terms or
combination of terms. This is especially useful if the current
rules do not cover a specific category of interest. It is
important to note that this is really the life blood of syndromic
surveillance and provides the most value – the ability to near
real time assess new and unusual events of interest. In
addition, the Chief Complaint can be used to apply quality
assurance checks to existing binning rules to verify the rules
are yielding the correct categories based on the original text
found in the Chief Complaint. Related, similar quality
assurance checks can be applied as new syndromic definitions
are developed.
The Chief Complaint can also be used to check the content of
messages in new feeds during the onboarding process to
insure the data reflect patients’ chief complaints and not a
standard term such as “ER visit” that does not contain sufficient
information to categorize the visit into appropriate syndromic
categories.

20 Describe the function of the SSN.

N/A

20a Cite the legal authority to use the SSN.

N/A

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21

Identify legal authorities governing information use PHSA Section 306; Public Health Security and Bioterrorism
Preparedness and Response Act of 2002; and the Pandemic
and disclosure specific to the system and program.
and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013

22

Are records on the system retrieved by one or more
PII data elements?

Yes
No
Published:

Identify the number and title of the Privacy Act
System of Records Notice (SORN) that is being used
22a
to cover the system or identify if a SORN is being
developed.

09-20-0136

Published:

Published:
In Progress
Directly from an individual about whom the
information pertains
In-Person
Hard Copy: Mail/Fax
Email
Online
Other
Government Sources
23

Within the OPDIV
Other HHS OPDIV
State/Local/Tribal
Foreign
Other Federal Entities
Other

Identify the sources of PII in the system.

Non-Government Sources
Members of the Public
Commercial Data Broker
Public Media/Internet
Private Sector
Other
23a

Identify the OMB information collection approval
number and expiration date.

24 Is the PII shared with other organizations?

0920-0824, 11/30/2015
Yes
No

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Within HHS
Other Federal
Agency/Agencies

24a

Identify with whom the PII is shared or disclosed and
for what purpose.

The data will be used for situational awareness for all-hazard
health threats (beyond bioterrorism or early event detection)
and to support national, state, and local responses to those
threats.
State or Local
Agency/Agencies
The data will be used for situational awareness for all-hazard
health threats (beyond bioterrorism or early event detection)
and to support national, state, and local responses to those
threats.
Private Sector

BioSense requires data use agreements (DUAs) with all
Describe any agreements in place that authorizes the providers that govern the retention and destruction of PII. The
DUAs provide guidance and agreement on areas including sole
information sharing or disclosure (e.g. Computer
use by the data source in a secure space, shared space, other
24b Matching Agreement, Memorandum of
health agency uses, and maintaining and disposing of data in a
Understanding (MOU), or Information Sharing
distributed computing environment and all policies and
Agreement (ISA)).
applicable procedures in compliance with the Federal
Information Security Management Act (FISMA).
Describe the procedures for accounting for
24c
disclosures

Any disclosure will be documented in a log maintain by the
program. The log will include who the information was
disclosed to, when the the disclosure was made, and when the
request for disclosure was received.

Describe the process in place to notify individuals
25 that their personal information will be collected. If
no prior notice is given, explain the reason.

BioSense does not collect information directly from individuals.
The submission of PII to the system by contributing agencies is
voluntary. The participating agencies are the original collector
and maintainer of data, so any notifications would be handled
by contributing institutions.

26

Is the submission of PII by individuals voluntary or
mandatory?

Voluntary
Mandatory

Describe the method for individuals to opt-out of the
collection or use of their PII. If there is no option to
27
object to the information collection, provide a
reason.

The submission of PII by contributing agencies is voluntary.
The participating agencies are the original collector and
maintainer of data, granting secondary access to BioSense
users. BioSense does not collect information directly from
individuals. The option to opt-out, if any, would be handled by
the participating agencies.

Describe the process to notify and obtain consent
from the individuals whose PII is in the system when
major changes occur to the system (e.g., disclosure
28 and/or data uses have changed since the notice at
the time of original collection). Alternatively, describe
why they cannot be notified or have their consent
obtained.

The collection of PII conducted by BioSense partners falls
within the HIPAA exemption for public health institutions;
thereby removing the necessity for individual consent.
BioSense is a secondary user of data and does not conduct any
primary data collection.

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Describe the process in place to resolve an
individual's concerns when they believe their PII has BioSense does not collect data direct from individuals. The
29 been inappropriately obtained, used, or disclosed, or contributing institutional partners collect data. All PII issues
that the PII is inaccurate. If no process exists, explain and concerns are addressed by the contributing partners.
why not.
Describe the process in place for periodic reviews of
PII contained in the system to ensure the data's
30
integrity, availability, accuracy and relevancy. If no
processes are in place, explain why not.

31

Identify who will have access to the PII in the system
and the reason why they require access.

The program will perform annual internal system audits to
review the PII collected. This review will focus on ensuring the
data's accuracy and integrity, and that the data is being
received in accordance with the Public Health Information
Network (PHIN) guide.

Users

By using shared data from multiple
jurisdictions (shared per fully executed
data-use agreements), state and local
health departments, and federal
agencies can put together regional
and national pictures routinely or
during events. Users can create views
and set alert thresholds to look at only
the particular information that is of
interest or utility to them.

Administrators

Administrators are required to have
access to the database to maintain the
system.

Developers

Developers are required to have access
to the database to maintain the
system, provide further development,
and maintain the data.

Contractors

ICF is the contractor charged with
running the system and maintaining
the Data.

Others
Requests for access to this data are reviewed and approved by
officials from the jurisdiction which supplied the data to CDC.
If the access request is approved, either the BioSense system
makes the data available automatically, or the BioSense
contractor implements the necessary permissions within the
Describe the procedures in place to determine which system to grant access.
32 system users (administrators, developers,
Users with a need to access these data will submit a written
contractors, etc.) may access PII.
request to the BioSense contractor via the technical support
website. Requests are reviewed and approved by CDC officials
and officials from the jurisdiction which supplied the data to
CDC. If the access request is approved, the BioSense
contractor implements the necessary permissions within the
system to grant access.
Describe the methods in place to allow those with
33 access to PII to only access the minimum amount of
information necessary to perform their job.

Users are assigned roles based on their need to access data
and the system. Password protection is enforced for different
roles and levels specific to job responsibility.

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Identify training and awareness provided to
personnel (system owners, managers, operators,
contractors and/or program managers) using the
34
system to make them aware of their responsibilities
for protecting the information being collected and
maintained.

Each user of the system is required to read and acknowledge
the rules of conduct located at https://www.biosen.se/
login.php. Users are notified of this review and must
acknowledge annually.

Describe training system users receive (above and
35 beyond general security and privacy awareness
training).

N/A

Do contracts include Federal Acquisition Regulation
36 and other appropriate clauses ensuring adherence to
privacy provisions and practices?

Describe the process and guidelines in place with
37 regard to the retention and destruction of PII. Cite
specific records retention schedules.

Yes
No
Input Data (Electronic feed(s) from other electronic systems)/
Dispose when data no longer needed.
System Data (created for research purposes that may be
required for follow up or reference for a moderate period of
time)/ Maintain at least six years, but no longer than ten years
after the retirement of the system depending upon program
need for scientific, legal, or business reference then delete/
destroy.
Output Data (Final reports: In summary form, the findings and
conclusions reached relative to scientific projects both with
CDC and through Contractual arrangements/Permanent.
Output Data (Reference copies: test runs, data corrections,
daily operational documents, for example)/Dispose when no
longer needed.
Output Data (Substantive reporting material)/Permanent.
Output Data (Routine reporting material)/Five years.
Output Data (Printouts derived from electronic records created
on an ad-hoc basis for reference purposes or to meet daytoday business needs/Dispose when no longer needed.
CDC users must use PIV authentication. Other users are
required to have a user name and strong password.

Describe, briefly but with specificity, how the PII will
38 be secured in the system using administrative,
technical, and physical controls.

The system environment is monitored via daily server logs
which support the system’s continuous monitoring strategy.
BioSense uses Logwatch to notify the project if unauthorized
remote connections are attempted. BioSense also uses
Amazon Web Services AWS Identity and Access Management
(IAM) to securely control access to AWS services and resources
for users.

General Comments

OPDIV Senior Official
for Privacy Signature

Beverly E.
Walker -S

Digitally signed by
Beverly E. Walker -S
Date: 2015.10.20
13:27:47 -04'00'

HHS Senior
Agency Official
for Privacy

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