Biosurveillance

Provides a coherent and comprehensive account of the theory and practice of real-time human disease outbreak detection, explicitly recognizing the revolution in practices of infection control and public health surveillance. Reviews the current mathematical, statistical, and computer science systems for early detection of disease outbreaks Provides extensive coverage of existing surveillance data Discusses experimental methods for data measurement and evaluation Addresses engineering and practical implementation of effective early detection systems Includes real case studies

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Workshop on Biosurveillance and Biosecurity, BioSecure 2008, held in Raleigh, NC, USA, in December 2008. The 18 revised full papers presented together with one invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on informatics infrastructure and policy considerations; network-based data analytics; biosurveillance models and outbreak detection; model assessment and case studies; environmental biosurveillance and case studies.

As evidenced by the anthrax attacks in 2001, the SARS outbreak in 2003, and the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, a pathogen does not recognize geographic or national boundaries, often leading to devastating consequences. Automated biosurveillance systems have emerged as key solutions for mitigating current and future health-related events. Focusing on this promising public health innovation, Biosurveillance: Methods and Case Studies discusses how these systems churn through vast amounts of health-related data to support epidemiologists and public health officials in the early identification, situation awareness, and response management of natural and man-made health-related events. The book follows a natural sequence from theory to application. The initial chapters build a foundation while subsequent chapters present more applied case studies from around the world, including China, the United States, Denmark, and the Asia-Pacific region. The contributors share candid, first-hand insights on lessons learned and unresolved issues that will help chart the future of biosurveillance. As this book illustrates, biosurveillance operates in a complex, multidimensional problem space that incorporates varied data. Capturing the progress of modern-day pioneers who are walking in John Snow’s footsteps, this volume shows how contemporary information technology can be applied to the age-old challenge of combating the spread of disease and illness.

Recently, there has been an increased focus on developing the ability to provide early detection of and situational awareness during a disease outbreak. The Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act sought to enhance this capability, in part, by creating the National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC). NBIC is to help provide early detection and situational awareness by integrating information and supporting an interagency biosurveillance community. The Act mandated reports on the state of biosurveillance and resource use in federal, state, local, and tribal governments. This report focuses on the actions taken by NBIC to: (1) acquire resources to accomplish its mission; and (2) effectively collaborate with its federal partners. Illustrations.

Presents basic and advanced methods with a focus on demonstrated added value for a broad class of public health surveillance problems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second NSF Workshop on Biosurveillance Systems and Case Studies, BioSurveillance 2007, held in New Brunswick, NJ, USA, May 2007. It brings together infectious disease informatics (IDI) researchers and practitioners to discuss selected topics directly relevant to data sharing and analysis for real-time animal and public health surveillance.

This book on Infectious Disease Informatics (IDI) and biosurveillance is intended to provide an integrated view of the current state of the art, identify technical and policy challenges and opportunities, and promote cross-disciplinary research that takes advantage of novel methodology and what we have learned from innovative applications. This book also fills a systemic gap in the literature by emphasizing informatics driven perspectives (e.g., information system design, data standards, computational aspects of biosurveillance algorithms, and system evaluation). Finally, this book attempts to reach policy makers and practitioners through the clear and effective communication of recent research findings in the context of case studies in IDI and biosurveillance, providing “hands-on” in-depth opportunities to practitioners to increase their understanding of value, applicability, and limitations of technical solutions. This book collects the state of the art research and modern perspectives of distinguished individuals and research groups on cutting-edge IDI technical and policy research and its application in biosurveillance. The contributed chapters are grouped into three units. Unit I provides an overview of recent biosurveillance research while highlighting the relevant legal and policy structures in the context of IDI and biosurveillance ongoing activities. It also identifies IDI data sources while addressing information collection, sharing, and dissemination issues as well as ethical considerations. Unit II contains survey chapters on the types of surveillance methods used to analyze IDI data in the context of public health and bioterrorism. Specific computational techniques covered include: text mining, time series analysis, multiple data streams methods, ensembles of surveillance methods, spatial analysis and visualization, social network analysis, and agent-based simulation. Unit III examines IT and decision support for public health event response and bio-defense. Practical lessons learned in developing public health and biosurveillance systems, technology adoption, and syndromic surveillance for large events are discussed. The goal of this book is to provide an understandable interdisciplinary IDI and biosurveillance reference either used as a standalone textbook or reference for students, researchers, and practitioners in public health, veterinary medicine, biostatistics, information systems, computer science, and public administration and policy.