Hackfest wants to figure out how to predict mosquito-borne disease epidemics

Computer programmers want to develop early warnings and response systems for mosquito-borne epidemics, and they hope to make progress in a three-day meetup to develop a decision-making dashboard solution that helps health organizations to proactively meet the threat of future outbreaks of Zika, Dengue and Chikungunya.

This one of a multi-pronged effort to try and combat diseases. Other efforts are spraying - though EPA teaches other countries how to spray it inside homes, they ban it in the US for political reasons - and then there is biology. As Hank Campbell at the American Council on Science and Health notes, the primary species behind vector-borne diseases is ecologically useless, only warmed-over 1960s talk about an environmental butterfly effect and perturbations throughout the ecosystem prevents a genetically-modified solution.

The proposed solution here is technological, a tool that, by presenting information in an easily comprehensible way, supports and informs decision-makers in healthcare to make the correct decisions on measures, at the right time. The dashboard tool will analyze streaming data on a number of disease transmission indicators based upon social media data, human mobility, weather and climate data, mosquito data and health data.

Users of the tool should also be able to adjust algorithms and add datasets depending on variable or place-specific conditions.

“We would like to develop a user-friendly forecasting tool with a dashboard that in an accessible way predict epidemic risk in an area even before an outbreak materializes. Most of all, we’d like the tool to help change measures from being reactive into being proactive. In the long-term, we hope that this kind of forecasting tool can be useful for epidemic risk assessment around other diseases as well,” says says Joacim Rocklöv, research leader at the Unit of Epidemiology and Global Health, and the Umeå Centre for Global Health Research at Umeå University.

Hackfest list of participants:Axel Kroeger, WHO/TDR, University of FreiburgBeat Schwegler, MicrosoftSachin Kundu, MicrosoftJoacim Rocklöv, Umeå UniversityMax Petzold, Sahlgrenska AcademyJing Helmersson, Umeå UniversityLaith Hussain, Sahlgrenska AcademySewe Maquins, Umeå UniversityBalvinder Singh Gill, Ministry of Health, MalaysiaDavid Benitez, Liverpool School of Hygiene and Tropical MedicineYesim Tozan, New York University