EDs supply critical infrastructure to provide medical care in the event of a disaster or disease outbreak, including seasonal and pandemic influenza (1). Already overcrowded and stretched to near-capacity, influenza activity augments patient volumes and increases ED crowding (2, 3); high ED patient volumes expected during a true influenza pandemic represents a significant threat to the nation's healthcare infrastructure (4) . EDs ability to manage both seasonal and pandemic influenza surges is dependent on coupling early detection with graded rapid response. While practical use of traditional surveillance systems has been limited due to the several week lag associated with reporting, new internet-based surveillance tools, such as GFT, report surveillance data in nearreal time, thus allowing rapid integration into healthcare response planning (5) .