Coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), PulseNet is a national network of public health and food regulatory agency laboratories. It consists of state and local health departments, as well as federal agencies such as the CDC, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food Safety and Inspection Service, and the Food and Drug Administration.
PulseNet's role is to detect food-borne disease case clusters, facilitate early identification of common source outbreaks, assist epidemiologists in investigating outbreaks, separating outbreak-associated cases from other sporadic cases, assisting in rapidly identifying the source of outbreaks, and acting as a rapid and effective means of communication between public health laboratories, according to the PulseNet Web site.