Teams to Develop Simulations of Disease Outbreaks
Global Security Newswire
An international research network charged with developing computer simulations of infectious disease outbreaks has added four new scientific teams, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health announced yesterday (see GSN, June 1, 2005). The research network is part of the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study. Its findings could help policy-makers draft plans to respond to disease outbreaks, whether natural or deliberate.
The four new teams are set to receive roughly $7.8 million over the next five years, and will work with four existing teams that were established in 2004.
The team comprised of researchers from the Harvard University School of Public Health, the University of Hong Kong, the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, and the University of Washington will use the money to explore how diseases are transmitted, for evaluating public health measures and to prepare methods for tracking disease outbreaks in early stages.
The team from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, the Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Argentina is expected to explore ways to identify emerging infectious disease clusters and track antimicrobial resistance in hospitals. It will also explore how to use information from large health care providers in models (National Institutes of Health release, Feb. 1).
