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. 2017 Sep:73:171-181.
doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2017.08.003. Epub 2017 Aug 7.

A Bayesian system to detect and characterize overlapping outbreaks

John M Aronis  1 , Nicholas E Millett  2 , Michael M Wagner  3 , Fuchiang Tsui  3 , Ye Ye  3 , Jeffrey P Ferraro  4 , Peter J Haug  4 , Per H Gesteland  5 , Gregory F Cooper  3
Affiliations

A Bayesian system to detect and characterize overlapping outbreaks

John M Aronis et al. J Biomed Inform. 2017 Sep.

Abstract

Outbreaks of infectious diseases such as influenza are a significant threat to human health. Because there are different strains of influenza which can cause independent outbreaks, and influenza can affect demographic groups at different rates and times, there is a need to recognize and characterize multiple outbreaks of influenza. This paper describes a Bayesian system that uses data from emergency department patient care reports to create epidemiological models of overlapping outbreaks of influenza. Clinical findings are extracted from patient care reports using natural language processing. These findings are analyzed by a case detection system to create disease likelihoods that are passed to a multiple outbreak detection system. We evaluated the system using real and simulated outbreaks. The results show that this approach can recognize and characterize overlapping outbreaks of influenza. We describe several extensions that appear promising.

Keywords: Bayesian modeling; Influenza; Outbreak characterization; Outbreak detection.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
End-to-end framework for outbreak detection and characterization.
Figure 2
Figure 2
ED ILI cases for Allegheny County 2009–2010 influenza season.
Figure 3
Figure 3
ED ILI cases for Salt Lake City 2010–2011 influenza season.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Probability of zero, one, or two outbreaks for Allegheny County 2009–2010 influenza season.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Evolution of predictions for Allegheny County 2009–2010 influenza season.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Probability of zero, one, or two outbreaks for Salt Lake City 2010–2011 influenza season.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Evolution of predictions for Salt Lake City 2010–2011 influenza season.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Comparison of MODS’ prediction on January 20 to positive influenza A and B laboratory tests in Salt Lake City 2010–2011. (Data from Utah’s Unified State Laboratory: Public Health.)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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