NSF Award Abstract - #0428241

ITR-(NHS)-(DMC): A National Center of Excellence for Infectious Disease Informatics

Abstract

Infectious disease outbreaks, either naturally occurring or caused by terror attacks, pose a critical threat to public health and national security. Information systems and infectious disease informatics (IDI) research are playing an increasingly important role in developing a comprehensive approach to prevent, detect, respond to, and manage infectious disease outbreaks. Computerized datasets on infectious diseases are currently used for disease reporting, including those developed by various federal, state, and local health, agriculture, and environment/wildlife agencies. However, such datasets are typically not interoperable, particularly in across jurisdiction and across species contexts, reducing their effective use in data modeling and analysis, disease surveillance, and disease management-related decision-making. In addition, the information management environment used by public health officials and researchers to analyze large amounts of infectious disease data and develop predictive models needs major improvements. A partnership has been developed with expertise in IDI, mission-critical Web-based interoperable systems, data security and access control, advanced data mining and visualization techniques, disease surveillance and predictive modeling, and information systems evaluation. The partnership includes: (1) the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Arizona, (2) the Information Systems Group at the University of Utah, (3) the New York State Department of Health and its partner Health Research, Inc., and (4) the California State Department of Health Services and its partner PHFE Management Solutions. Building on ongoing IDI research and infrastructure development efforts, research is aimed at (a) developing an integrated and scalable information sharing, monitoring, and analysis environment across jurisdictions and species for major infectious diseases, (b) developing novel data analysis, surveillance, and visualization techniques to meet the critical needs of IDI, and (c) gaining a systematic understanding of related policy, user evaluation, and technology adoption issues. The intended intellectual contributions are threefold: (1) developing and evaluating system performance and scalability models and related algorithms needed for the efficient operation of large-scale realtime information query and monitoring/surveillance systems such as the NIDII, (2) developing and evaluating a set of novel spatio-temporal data analysis and online surveillance techniques which can be used in both IDI and other applications needing similar capabilities (e.g., crime analysis), and (3) developing a comprehensive user evaluation and technology adoption framework and conducting a detailed user evaluation and organizational impact study of the developed IDI system and related technologies. The proposed work will have the following major broader impacts: (a) The research team will develop a working infectious disease information system across jurisdictions and disease types, providing an integrated data sharing, access, analysis, visualization, and surveillance environment for researchers, public health officials, and law enforcement and national security officials who need to assess risk of and respond to biological terror attacks. (b) The work will bring together previously disparate research and practitioner communities to conduct IDI research of significant practical relevance. In addition, it will foster cross-fertilization between law enforce and national security research and IDI.