A surveillance system's usefulness for outbreak detection should be correlated with its ability to increase the lead time in detecting outbreaks of public health significance, which should subsequently lead to a more timely intervention. Analysis of currently available data seem to show promising applications of EDE in early warning alert capability of impending increases in dengue cases in the Philippines though when case counts are 5 or less, alert results may not be very reliable. Validity of alerts generated by EDE for early detection of outbreaks should be further investigated using other diseases, prediagnostic/ nonclinical/nontraditional data and syndromes, taking into consideration effect of seasonality, weekly trends or holidays.