New technologies in predicting, preventing and controlling emerging infectious diseases

Improved inference of time-varying reproduction numbers during infectious disease outbreaks

“…Quantifying disease transmissibility during outbreaks is crucial for designing effective control measures and assessing their effectiveness once implemented. This assessment forms a critical part of real-time situational awareness (Cauchemez et al, 2006a;Cowling et al, 2010;Christaki, 2015;Cori et al, 2017;Polonsky et al, 2019). Indeed, in circumstances in which the incidence of cases is still increasing, but the time-dependent reproduction number is dropping, there might be a very different outlook compared to if the incidence of cases and the reproduction number are both increasing.…”

Defending against the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak: How can the Internet of Things (IoT) help to save the world?

“…For example, Google Flu Trends (GFT) was tracking health-related search engine queries in order to monitor, in real-time, influenza activity. 13 However, it is important to note that GFT was discontinued due to concerns regarding data inaccuracy. 14 The flaw in GFT highlights a commonplace issue in big data analysis (and any data analysis), overfitting of data to a small number of cases.…”

“…A wealth of new technologies in the form of the Internet of Things (IoT) is gaining growing global attention 8 and becoming increasingly available for predicting, preventing and monitoring emerging infectious diseases. 9 The IoT refers to an interconnected web of smart devices, sensors, and individuals through which data can be collected in its raw form and transmitted through the internet to be analyzed for patterns or trends. State-of-the-art IoT-Enabled Health Monitoring Systems (Health Monitoring Systems) provide real-time surveillance through the use of wearable health-monitoring devices, cloud-based remote health testing, and artificial intelligence (AI).…”

“…12 IoT within infectious disease epidemiology is an emerging field, however, the ubiquitous availability of smart technologies, as well as increased risks of infectious disease spread through the globalization and interconnectedness of the world necessitates its use for predicting, preventing and controlling emerging infectious diseases. 9 Web-based surveillance tools and epidemic intelligence methods have recently emerged in several countries 9 to facilitate risk assessment and timely outbreak detection, however widespread use of the available technologies is lacking.…”

Our changing world: Impacts on health and infectious diseases

“…diseases, reviewed by Dr Eirini Christaki. 21 Systems of global surveillance are essential for the timely detection of outbreaks, the identification of syndromes caused by previously unknown pathogens and the rapid implementation of preventive and control measures. Effective surveillance is a challenge of outmost importance in under-sourced, developing countries with poor national public health systems, which are expected to be affected the most by climatic change.…”