Free software will help local officials understand disease outbreaks
- By Nancy zz_Ferris
- Dec 06, 2007
New public-domain software from the National Institutes of Health will help public health authorities understand disease outbreaks and take the most effective steps to halt the spread of an epidemic.
The software, called TranStat, is a product of an NIH-sponsored international research program called the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS). TranStat can help communities prepare for outbreaks of pandemic flu and other diseases such as smallpox or SARS, NIH officials said.
Public health officials can enter into the system information about infected individuals, such as their age, sex and when their symptoms began; the people with whom they were in contact; and any steps taken to mitigate the symptoms or the spread of the disease. No names or other information that would identify individuals is collected, the officials said.
TranStat determines the probability that one individual contracted the disease from another and determines infection rates. With this information in hand, officials can take steps such as closing schools or distributing medicines to those mostly likely to become ill.
The team that developed TranStat used the underlying technology to analyze an outbreak of avian flu in Indonesia in 2006. They found that the spread was centered in an extended family and was not sustained, according to a recent report in a medical journal.
Although sophisticated analytical methodologies are at work in TranStat, it is designed to be portable and easy to use in the field.
"The faster we learn about emerging infectious diseases and their characteristics, the quicker we can contain and mitigate them," said Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington in Seattle who heads the research team. "TranStat will help us do this by standardizing data collection and analysis."
Future enhancements will allow field employees to enter more refined data about the affected population and their social networks.
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences at NIH funds the MIDAS program. The software can be downloaded free.
About the Author