Modeling Disease Outbreaks, Saving Lives

From anthrax spores to the SARS virus, bioterrorism and world epidemics are growing threats. The U.S. government is countering with research designed to increase America’s capacity to respond to a catastrophe.

As part of the new national defense initiative, a research team let by RTI International received an $18.8 million research grant to develop a Web-based portal and a set of computational and analytic tools for researchers and public health officials to model emerging infectious diseases and appropriate public health responses.

In the first use of a new infectious disease modeling system consortium, RTI researchers are hosting an exercise to test public health responses to an outbreak of avian flu in a simulated Southeast Asian community of 500,000 residents.

During the exercise, an IBM 64cpu computer system based at RTI will make the complex calculations required to simulate the spread of a possible avian flu outbreak in the hypothetical community. Using award-winning SAS software, the computer simulations will incorporate data on population density and age structure, distribution of schools, locations of hospitals and clinics, travel and the infectiousness of the virus. This information will allow the researchers to test various intervention strategies that might reduce the rate of transmission between people.

"We can see what would happen if we take certain actions, like vaccinating specific groups, using antiviral medications, restricting travel or implementing other public health measures," says Irene Eckstrand, Ph.D., MIDAS program officer at the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences. "Computer models let us envisage the impact of these decisions in a variety of scenarios."

The simulation exercise is part of the national effort called MIDAS (Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study), through which research teams are developing computational models and analytic tools to better explain, predict and control the interactions between infectious disease agents and their hosts during disease outbreaks.

"SAS’ analytical power – with capabilities such as predictive and descriptive modeling, forecasting, simulation and optimization – helps researchers make sense out of data. These capabilities will prove invaluable for this exercise and for MIDAS as a whole," says Graham Perry, director of SAS U.S Government and Education Alliances.

Results from the exercise could be available by early January 2005.