What's unusual in online disease outbreak news?

Background: Accurate and timely detection of public health events of international concern is necessary to help support risk assessment and response and save lives. Novel event-based methods that use the World Wide Web as a signal source offer potential to extend health surveillance into areas where traditional indicator networks are lacking. In this paper we address the issue of systematically evaluating online health news to support automatic alerting using daily disease-country counts text mined from real world data using BioCaster. For 18 data sets produced by BioCaster, we compare 5 aberration detection algorithms (EARS C2, C3, W2, F-statistic and EWMA) for performance against expert moderated ProMED-mail postings. Results: We report sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), mean alerts/100 days and F1, at 95% confidence interval (CI) for 287 ProMED-mail postings on 18 outbreaks across 14 countries over a 366 day period. Results indicate that W2 had the best F1 with a slight benefit for day of week effect over C2. In drill down analysis we indicate issues arising from the granular choice of country-level modeling, sudden drops in reporting due to day of week effects and reporting bias. Automatic alerting has been implemented in BioCaster available from http://born.nii.ac.jp. Conclusions: Online health news alerts have the potential to enhance manual analytical methods by increasing throughput, timeliness and detection rates. Systematic evaluation of health news aberrations is necessary to push forward our understanding of the complex relationship between news report volumes and case numbers and to select the best performing features and algorithms

3D and 4D Simulations for Landscape Reconstruction and Damage Scenarios. GIS Pilot Applications

The project 3D and 4D Simulations for Landscape Reconstruction and Damage Scenarios: GIS Pilot Applications has been devised with the intention to deal with the demand for research, innovation and applicative methodology on the part of the international programme, requiring concrete results to increase the capacity to know, anticipate and respond to a natural disaster. This project therefore sets out to develop an experimental methodology, a wide geodatabase, a connected performant GIS platform and multifunctional scenarios able to profitably relate the added values deriving from different geotechnologies, aimed at a series of crucial steps regarding landscape reconstruction, event simulation, damage evaluation, emergency management, multi-temporal analysis. The Vesuvius area has been chosen for the pilot application owing to such an impressive number of people and buildings subject to volcanic risk that one could speak in terms of a possible national disaster. The steps of the project move around the following core elements: creation of models that reproduce the territorial and anthropic structure of the past periods, and reconstruction of the urbanized area, with temporal distinctions; three-dimensional representation of the Vesuvius area in terms of infrastructuralresidential aspects; GIS simulation of the expected event; first examination of the healthcareepidemiological consequences; educational proposals. This paper represents a proactive contribution which describes the aims of the project, the steps which constitute a set of specific procedures for the methodology which we are experimenting, and some thoughts regarding the geodatabase useful to “package” illustrative elaborations. Since the involvement of the population and adequate hazard preparedness are very important aspects, some educational and communicational considerations are presented in connection with the use of geotechnologies to promote the knowledge of risk

Requirements for Provenance on the Web

From where did this tweet originate? Was this quote from the New York Times modified? Daily, we rely on data from the Web but often it is difficult or impossible to determine where it came from or how it was produced. This lack of provenance is particularly evident when people and systems deal with Web information or with any environment where information comes from sources of varying quality. Provenance is not captured pervasively in information systems. There are major technical, social, and economic impediments that stand in the way of using provenance effectively. This paper synthesizes requirements for provenance on the Web for a number of dimensions focusing on three key aspects of provenance: the content of provenance, the management of provenance records, and the uses of provenance information. To illustrate these requirements, we use three synthesized scenarios that encompass provenance problems faced by Web users toda

Surveillance for Neisseria meningitidis Disease Activity and Transmission Using Information Technology

Background While formal reporting, surveillance, and response structures remain essential to protecting public health, a new generation of freely accessible, online, and real-time informatics tools for disease tracking are expanding the ability to raise earlier public awareness of emerging disease threats. The rationale for this study is to test the hypothesis that the HealthMap informatics tools can complement epidemiological data captured by traditional surveillance monitoring systems for meningitis due to Neisseria meningitides (N. meningitides) by highlighting severe transmissible disease activity and outbreaks in the United States. Methods Annual analyses of N. meningitides disease alerts captured by HealthMap were compared to epidemiological data captured by the Centers for Disease Control’s Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs) for N. meningitides. Morbidity and mortality case reports were measured annually from 2010 to 2013 (HealthMap) and 2005 to 2012 (ABCs). Findings HealthMap N. meningitides monitoring captured 80-90% of alerts as diagnosed N. meningitides, 5-20% of alerts as suspected cases, and 5-10% of alerts as related news articles. HealthMap disease alert activity for emerging disease threats related to N. meningitides were in agreement with patterns identified historically using traditional surveillance systems. HealthMap’s strength lies in its ability to provide a cumulative “snapshot” of weak signals that allows for rapid dissemination of knowledge and earlier public awareness of potential outbreak status while formal testing and confirmation for specific serotypes is ongoing by public health authorities. Conclusions The underreporting of disease cases in internet-based data streaming makes inadequate any comparison to epidemiological trends illustrated by the more comprehensive ABCs network published by the Centers for Disease Control. However, the expected delays in compiling confirmatory reports by traditional surveillance systems (at the time of writing, ABCs data for 2013 is listed as being provisional) emphasize the helpfulness of real-time internet-based data streaming to quickly fill gaps including the visualization of modes of disease transmission in outbreaks for better resource and action planning. HealthMap can also contribute as an internet-based monitoring system to provide real-time channel for patients to report intervention-related failures.National Library of Medicine (U.S.) (Grant 5 R01 LM010812-04

Can Twitter be a source of information on allergy? Correlation of pollen counts with tweets reporting symptoms of allergic rhinoconjunctivitis and names of antihistamine drugs

Pollen forecasts are in use everywhere to inform therapeutic decisions for patients with allergic rhinoconjunctivitis (ARC). We exploited data derived from Twitter in order to identify tweets reporting a combination of symptoms consistent with a case definition of ARC and those reporting the name of an antihistamine drug. In order to increase the sensitivity of the system, we applied an algorithm aimed at automatically identifying jargon expressions related to medical terms. We compared weekly Twitter trends with National Allergy Bureau weekly pollen counts derived from US stations, and found a high correlation of the sum of the total pollen counts from each stations with tweets reporting ARC symptoms (Pearson's correlation coefficient: 0.95) and with tweets reporting antihistamine drug names (Pearson's correlation coefficient: 0.93). Longitude and latitude of the pollen stations affected the strength of the correlation. Twitter and other social networks may play a role in allergic disease surveillance and in signaling drug consumptions trends

Identification of Informative Content Needs supporting Rapid Risk Assessment of Acute Public Health Events (ICN-RRA)

Risk Assessment is considered a key part of the risk management cycle and can be defined as a mental process aiming to establish a level of risk for a population in relation to a specific event, with the purpose of identifying potential response or mitigation actions. The process is usually expressed in terms of probability of occurrence of an event and of consequences for the involved individuals, and is used in several scientific disciplines. In public health, Risk Assessment implies an evaluation of a risk in terms of health for a human population exposed, or potentially exposed, to a threat. In case of outbreaks and other acute public health events, the process is commonly defined within the scientific community as a “Rapid Risk Assessment of Acute Public Health Events” (RRA) and aims to achieve a particularly prompt identification of action able to rapidly limit the spread of the event and the health consequences for the population. The Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre (DRMKC) is an initiative of the European Commission launched in 2015 to enhance resilience to disasters at EU level. The activities of the DRMKC support the translation of complex scientific data and analyses into usable information and provide science-based advice for decision making purposes, as well as timely and reliable scientific-based analyses for emergency preparedness and coordinated response activities. The overall scope of the DRMKC is to bring together existing initiatives in which science and innovative practices contribute to the management of natural disaster risks. Among other objectives, the DRMKC is required to support EU member states in improving their capacities to reduce risk across multiple hazards and sectors, including global health threats. For this reason, in terms of acute public health events, the DRMKC is currently trying to identify the information useful to support the RRA related to biological hazards (epidemics). The ultimate aim is to create a web-based informative repository openly consultable by member state authorities and other health professionals both in the EU and further afield. This platform aims to includes validated multidisciplinary information and an exhaustive list of additional credible informative online sources able to support RRA activities.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Applied Epidemiology during COVID-19 in Vietnam

This thesis presents projects I conducted between February 2020 to December 2021 to meet the competencies of the Master of Applied Epidemiology Program (MAE) of the Australian National University (ANU). During this period, I was employed at the Department of Communicable Disease Control of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) in Hanoi, Vietnam. Chapter 1 – Introduction. This chapter provides an overview of my field placement, describes how I met the different MAE requirements, and presents other side projects I have been involved in during my MAE that do not fall under the MAE competencies. Chapter 2 – Investigate an outbreak: In-flight transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Vietnam: Results from an outbreak investigation and containment measures. This project covers the investigation of and response to an in-flight COVID-19 transmission event in Vietnam in March 2020. I took part in the investigations from the beginning which resulted in the publication of two journal articles: one on the in-depth investigation of the on-board transmission event (Journal Article 1), and another one describing the response activities to prevent community transmission (Journal Article 2). We found that one infectious passenger in business class very likely infected at least 12 other passengers during a 10-hour flight, many of whom were seated beyond the two-row/seat distance threshold that is usually used for contact tracing among airplane passengers. Timely, systematic and comprehensive contact tracing of all passengers and their close contacts was needed to prevent widespread community transmission. Chapter 3 – Analyze a public health dataset: Association of public health interventions and COVID19 incidence in Vietnam, January to December 2020. In this project I analyzed the relation between public health interventions and COVID-19 incidence in Vietnam over the course of 2020, which culminated in the publication of Journal Article 3. This analysis, which was the first of its kind in Vietnam and the region, identified important associations between the timing of public health interventions and changes in the reproductive number of SARSCoV-2. Chapter 4 – Evaluate a surveillance system: After action review of the COVID-19 surveillance system in Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam in 2020. For this project I conducted a Literature Review on the World Health Organization (WHO)’s After Action Review (AAR) toolkit, and used it to evaluate the effectiveness of the surveillance system in Quang Ninh province, Vietnam in preventing and controlling COVID-19. This evaluation, presented as a Final Report in this chapter, was part of a WHO-funded initiative to learn lessons from the COVID19 response in Vietnam. While central coordination and adaptive capacity during the emergency were identified as strengths, my evaluation also provides important recommendations on how to improve the surveillance system in Quang Ninh province, in particular through improved integration of different data systems and communication channels between health jurisdictions of Quang Ninh’s healthcare system. Chapter 5 – Design an epidemiological project: User-generated online information in response to a COVID-19 outbreak in Vietnam in July – September 2020. In this project I investigated so-called ‘infodemics’ related to a COVID-19 outbreak in Da Nang province, Vietnam between July and September 2020 by applying content analysis and semantic network analysis to publicly available user-generated information from the internet. I conducted two separate analyses: one on ‘infodemics’ related to COVID-19 incidence and mortality, which resulted in Submitted Article Manuscript 1; and another on ‘infodemics’ in relation to public health interventions, which resulted in Submitted Article Manuscript 2. Findings showed that public awareness and perceptions were highly correlated with the evolution of COVID-19 incidence and mortality (at first) during the outbreak, while misinformation and unverified information related to public health interventions that were implemented in response to the outbreak were also prevalent. Chapter 6 – Other MAE requirements. In this chapter I report on other MAE requirements which I completed during my fellowship, namely the publication of a Lay Audience Report, the Lesson From The Field, and the Teaching Experienc