Mass General Rolls Out Disease Surveillance System

Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston) has gone live with an application designed to help the Massachusetts Department of Public Health reduce the risk of major outbreaks of communicable diseases.

The high-volume system, which is built on Cambridge, Mass.-based InterSystems Corporation’s Ensemble platform, processes more than 91 million HL7 messages annually. According to the company, the system will deliver disease information updates every eight hours, 24/7.

Massachusetts General is part of the Boston-based Partners HealthCare integrated network. Partners includes multiple major hospitals with more than 5,000 practicing physicians attending to four million outpatient visits and 160,000 admissions annually.