Biowatch Present and Future: Meeting Mission Needs for Effective Biosurveillance?

The subcommittees are meeting today to receive testimony on the Department of Homeland Security's biosurveillance efforts and particularly the BioWatch program. Established in 2003 in the wake of the anthrax attacks that killed five people, the BioWatch program was the first Nationally-deployed system designed to detect an aerosol attack with anthrax and other agents of bioterrorism. BioWatch is currently in its second generation known as Gen–2, and accounts for the vast majority of the budget at the Office of Health Affairs. Now very near the 11th, of course the 11th anniversary of the attacks that prompted the program's development, it is time to take a step back and ask what Gen–2 has accomplished for us, what it has not achieved, and how we can better understand its relevancy to an overall biodetection architecture that must be dynamic and capable of meeting evolving threats.