Catching the flu: Syndromic surveillance, algorithmic governmentality and global health security

How do algorithms shape the imaginary and practice of security? Does their proliferation point to a shift in the political rationality of security? If so, what is the nature and extent of that shift? This article explores these questions in relation to global health security. Prompted by an epidemic of new infectious disease outbreaks – from HIV, SARS and pandemic flu, through to MERS and Ebola – many governments are making health security an integral part of their national security strategies. Algorithms are central to these developments because they underpin a number of nextgeneration syndromic surveillance systems now routinely used by governments and international organizations to rapidly detect new outbreaks globally. This article traces the origins, design and evolution of three such internet-based surveillance systems: 1) the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, 2) the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, and 3) HealthMap. The article shows how the successive introduction of those three syndromic surveillance systems has propelled algorithmic technologies into the heart of global outbreak detection. This growing recourse to algorithms for the purposes of strengthening global health security, the article argues, signals a significant shift in the underlying problem, nature, and role of knowledge in contemporary security practices

International Society for Disease Surveillance Conference 2011: Building the Future of Public Health Surveillance: Building the Future of Public Health Surveillance

Daniel Reidpath - ORCID: 0000-0002-8796-0420 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8796-04204pubpub1117

Approaches to the evaluation of outbreak detection methods

BACKGROUND: An increasing number of methods are being developed for the early detection of infectious disease outbreaks which could be naturally occurring or as a result of bioterrorism; however, no standardised framework for examining the usefulness of various outbreak detection methods exists. To promote comparability between studies, it is essential that standardised methods are developed for the evaluation of outbreak detection methods. METHODS: This analysis aims to review approaches used to evaluate outbreak detection methods and provide a conceptual framework upon which recommendations for standardised evaluation methods can be based. We reviewed the recently published literature for reports which evaluated methods for the detection of infectious disease outbreaks in public health surveillance data. Evaluation methods identified in the recent literature were categorised according to the presence of common features to provide a conceptual basis within which to understand current approaches to evaluation. RESULTS: There was considerable variation in the approaches used for the evaluation of methods for the detection of outbreaks in public health surveillance data, and appeared to be no single approach of choice. Four main approaches were used to evaluate performance, and these were labelled the Descriptive, Derived, Epidemiological and Simulation approaches. Based on the approaches identified, we propose a basic framework for evaluation and recommend the use of multiple approaches to evaluation to enable a comprehensive and contextualised description of outbreak detection performance. CONCLUSION: The varied nature of performance evaluation demonstrated in this review supports the need for further development of evaluation methods to improve comparability between studies. Our findings indicate that no single approach can fulfil all evaluation requirements. We propose that the cornerstone approaches to evaluation identified provide key contributions to support internal and external validity and comparability of study findings, and suggest these be incorporated into future recommendations for performance assessment

Graph Theory and Networks in Biology

In this paper, we present a survey of the use of graph theoretical techniques in Biology. In particular, we discuss recent work on identifying and modelling the structure of bio-molecular networks, as well as the application of centrality measures to interaction networks and research on the hierarchical structure of such networks and network motifs. Work on the link between structural network properties and dynamics is also described, with emphasis on synchronization and disease propagation.Comment: 52 pages, 5 figures, Survey Pape