Real-Time Population Health Detector
Abstract
The objective of the Bio-ALIRT is to evaluate the utility of non-traditional data sources to enable early detection of potential bio-terrorist attacks. Early detection will permit prompt intervention and appropriate treatment, potentially saving large numbers of lives and avoiding widespread infection among military and civilian populations. General Dynamics (then Veridian Systems Division), in cooperation with Stanford University, performed research and evaluated bio-terrorism detection services in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. The effort resulted in development of analytical technology and a prototype Real-time Population Health Detector (RPHD) application relying on non-traditional data collected from a variety of sources to detect aggregate changes in people's behavior in a community that indicate the early outbreak of illness. This report examines the problem of detecting anomalous signals" in a mixed signal background, consisting of periodic and random contributions; and which mixtures are posited to exhibit, to a certain extent, what might be called a state of statistical stability" for significant periods of time-at least until some signal" of interest obtrudes. The context is, of course, that in which we monitor non-traditional indicators for the potential early manifestation of responses to disease progression in a given population. To meet the complex operational and research needs of these surveillance applications, this report also describes a system called BioSTORM (Biological Spatio-Temporal Outbreak Reasoning Module. BioSTORM is a computational framework that provides run-time mediation between data sources and problem solvers with the goal of meeting the performance and flexibility demands of emerging disease surveillance systems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA429270
Entities
People
- Gene Mcclellan
- Mark Musen
Organizations
- General Dynamics Mission Systems