The Defense Medical Surveillance System and the Department of Defense Serum Repository: Glimpses of the Future of Public Health Surveillance
Mark V. Rubertone, MD, MPH and
John F. Brundage, MD, MPH
The authors are with the Army Medical Surveillance Activity, Directorate of Epidemiology and Disease Surveillance, US Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, Washington, DC.
Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Mark V. Rubertone, MD, MPH, Army Medical Surveillance Activity, Bldg T-20, Room 213 (Attn: MCHB-TS-EDM), 6900 Georgia Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20307-5001 (e-mail: mark.rubertone{at}amedd.army.mil).
The Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS) is the centralrepository of medical surveillance data for the US armed forces.The DMSS integrates data from sources worldwide in a continuouslyexpandingrelational database that documents the military and medicalexperiences of servicemembers throughout their careers.
The Department of Defense Serum Repository (DoDSR) is a centralarchive of sera drawn from servicemembers for medical surveillancepurposes.
Currently, the DMSS contains data relevant to more than 7 millionindividuals who have served in the armed forces since 1990,and the DoDSR contains more than 27 million specimens that arelinkable to data in the DMSS. Recent applications of the DMSSand DoDSR provide glimpses of the capabilities and uses of comprehensivepublic health surveillance systems.
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