Infectious Disease Informatics And Biosurveillance

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.

An up-to-date and comprehensive treatment of biosurveillancetechniques With the worldwide awareness of bioterrorism and drug-resistantinfectious diseases, the need for surveillance systems toaccurately detect emerging epidemicsis essential for maintainingglobal safety. Responding to these issues, Disease Surveillancebrings together fifteen eminent researchers in the fields ofmedicine, epidemiology, biostatistics, and medical informatics todefine the necessary elements of an effective disease surveillanceprogram, including research, development, implementation, andoperations. The surveillance systems and techniques presented inthe text are designed to best utilize modern technology, manageemerging public health threats, and adapt to environmentalchanges. Following a historical overview detailing the need for diseasesurveillance systems, the text is divided into the following threeparts: Part One sets forth the informatics knowledge needed toimplement a disease surveillance system, including a discussion ofdata sources currently used in syndromic surveillance systems. Part Two provides case studies of modern disease surveillancesystems, including cases that highlight implementation andoperational difficulties as well as the successes experienced byhealth departments in the United States, Canada, Europe, andAsia. Part Three addresses practical issues concerning the evaluationof disease surveillance systems and the education of futureinformatics and disease surveillance practitioners. It alsoassesses how future technology will shape the field of diseasesurveillance. This book's multidisciplinary approach is ideal for publichealth professionals who need to understand all the facets within adisease surveillance program and implement the technology needed tosupport surveillance activities. An outline of the componentsneeded for a successful disease surveillance system combined withextensive use of case studies makes this book well-suited as atextbook for public health informatics courses

There are several reasons to be interested in infectious disease informatics. First, it is of practical significance to understand how the technology revolution has been reshaping infectious disease research and management, as rapid advances in geno- associated technologies have changed the very nature of the questions we can ask. Second, the emerging evidence has confirmed that the application of information technologies in healthcare enhances our ability to deal with infectious diseases. Finally, the implementation of electronic health records has created new and exciting opportunities for secure, reliable and ethically sound clinical decision support and biosurveillance guided by the genomics of pathogens with epidemic potential. This volume addresses the growing need for the critical overview of recent developments in microbial genomics and biomedical informatics relevant to the control of infectious diseases. This field is rapidly expanding, and attracts a wide audience of clinicians, public health professionals, biomedical researchers and computer scientists who are fascinated by the complex puzzle of infectious disease. This book takes a multidisciplinary approach with a calculated move away from the traditional health informatics topics of computerized protocols for antibiotic p- scribing and pathology testing. Instead authors invite you to explore the emerging frontiers of bioinformatics-guided pathogen profiling, the system microbiolo- enabled intelligent design of new drugs and vaccines, and new ways of real-time biosurveillance and hospital infection control. Throughout the book, references are made to different products supplied by public sources and commercial vendors, but this is not an endorsement of these products or vendors.

Computer-based infectious disease surveillance systems are capable of real-time or near real-time detection of serious illnesses and potential bioterrorism agent exposures and represent a major step forward in disease surveillance. Infectious Disease Informatics: Syndromic Surveillance for Public Health and Bio-Defense is an in-depth monograph that analyzes and evaluates the outbreak modeling and detection capabilities of existing surveillance systems under a unified framework, and presents the first book-length coverage of the subject from an informatics-driven perspective. Individual chapters consider the state of the art, including the facilitation of data collection, sharing and transmission; a focus on various outbreak detection methods; data visualization and information dissemination issues; and system assessment and other policy issues. Eight chapters then report on several real-world case studies, summarizing and comparing eight syndromic surveillance systems, including those that have been adopted by many public health agencies (e.g., RODS and BioSense). The book concludes with a discussion of critical issues and challenges, with a look to future directions. This book is an excellent source of current information for researchers in public health and IT. Government public health officials and private-sector practitioners in both public health and IT will find the most up-to-date information available, and students from a variety of disciplines, including public health, biostatistics, information systems, computer science, and public administration and policy will get a comprehensive look at the concepts, techniques, and practices of syndromic surveillance.

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 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 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.

Disease Surveillance: Technological Contributions to Global Health Security reminds us of the continued vulnerability of the world to contagious infections. The book presents examples of disease surveillance systems and evaluates promising advances as well as opportunities for new systems. It also explains how newer technologies can allow countries