The EPIWORK project proposes a multidisciplinary research effort aimed at developing the appropriate framework of tools and  knowledge needed for the design of epidemic forecast infrastructures to be used in by epidemiologists and public health scientists. The project is a truly interdisciplinary effort, anchored to the research questions and needs of epidemiology research by the participation in the consortium of leading epidemiologists, public health specialists and mathematical biologists. more »

The first meeting of the project will be held in Turin from 16 to 18 of November, hosted by the coordinating team at ISI Foundation. All the 12 partners will be present with scientists from the several teams. The aim of the meeting is to coordinate the collaboration between the various Work Packages and to ascertain the state of progress from the project start until the present.

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In Vaccine’s latest issue the results of the evaluation of the Grote Griepmeting.The evaluation was done by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in the Netherlands. At page 6353 there are references to Sweden’s random population-based approach and on page 6357 there are a few lines on EPIWORK. The reference can be found in the Publications page.

An update on the Epiwork project will be presented during a satellite meeting of the European Conference on Complex Systems 2009: COSI-ICT’09 First International Workshop on Complex Systems for Socially Intelligent ICT.

The joint effort of the two research groups at Indiana University and Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation in Turin, coordinated by Prof. Alessandro Vespignani, has led to the production of projections of the spread of the ongoing H1N1 Flu epidemic.

By using the data on the chronology of the 2009 novel influenza A(H1N1), in order to estimate the transmission potential and the relevant model parameters, the model generated stochastic realizations of the epidemic evolution worldwide to gather information such as prevalence, morbidity, number of secondary cases etc.

Based on the maximum likelihood analysis of the arrival time distribution generated by the model in 12 countries seeded by Mexico and by using 1 million computationally simulated epidemics, a best estimate R0 = 1.75 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.64 to 1.88) was found for the basic reproductive number.

US winter projections: mitigation effect of antiviral treatment

Correlation analysis allows the selection of the most probable seasonal behavior based on the observed pattern, leading to the identification of plausible scenarios for the future unfolding of the pandemic and the estimate of pandemic activity peaks in the different hemispheres.

The analysis shows the potential for an early epidemic peak occurring in October/November in the Northern hemisphere, likely before large-scale vaccination campaigns could be carried out. The baseline results refer to a worst-case scenario in which additional mitigation policies are not considered. We suggest that the planning of additional mitigation policies such as systematic antiviral treatments might be the key to delay the activity peak in order to restore the effectiveness of the vaccination programs.

Read more on:

• D. Balcan, H. Hu, B. Goncalves, P. Bajardi, C. Poletto, J.J. Ramasco, D. Paolotti, N. Perra, M. Tizzoni, W. Van den Broeck, V. Colizza, A. Vespignani “Seasonal transmission potential and activity peaks of the new influenza A(H1N1): a Monte Carlo likelihood analysis based on human mobility“, BMC Medicine 2009 7:45

• http://www.gleamviz.org

An article from the Washington Post published on September 2nd 2009 deals with technology and new forms of Internet social interaction as powerful tools that are transforming how influenza outbreaks are monitored.The article contains an interview to Alessandro Vespignani, professor of Informatics at Indiana University and coordinator of the Epiwork project. “All these things really change the way that we can manage diseases,” said Alessandro Vespignani. “It’s not just . . . a passive approach, where we just wait for the disease and then try to do something.”

The article mentions also “flu watcher” programs in which volunteers report their health conditions weekly via the Internet citing the case of Italy, the Netherlands, Britain and other countries, with tens of thousands of volunteers.

The opening of the UK IMS platform has been a success since the very beginning.

Registration for the the UK Flu Survey began in the middle of July. By noon on July 27th, over 4400 users had registered at flusurvey.org.uk, with the greatest number of user registrations taking place on July 21st.

John Edmunds, leader of the UK team, commented this remarkable achievement:” We launched it on a Thursday afternoon, and e-mailed all our friends and family and asked them to log on and to tell others. By the end of the Thursday we had a few hundred participants, and by the time the press looked at the site we had 500-600 participants. So it already looked quite impressive. Then, we had a surge of interest which brought us up to the 4000 mark.”

The internet has been used to monitor patterns of influenza-like-illness (ILI) in the Netherlands and Belgium since 2003, in Portugal since 2005 and Italy since 2007. The UK flu survey extends this system to the UK. The platform has just been launched and its depletion is one of the tasks of Epiwork WP 5. So far, almost 400 volunteers are participating. Everybody living in the UK can register here and start participating.

The UK platform is also the first IMS that implemented a Contact Survey to detect contact patterns data among the volunteers.

This survey has been developed by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). The LSHTM is the UK’s national school of public health training and research and is found in Bloomsbury, London, near the British Museum.

Coordinator: AI BV, the Netherlands

Partners: ISI, Italy,; FGC-IGC, Portugal; CREATE-NET, Italy; LSHTM, United Kingdom; KU Leuven, Belgium; FFCUL, Portugal (for WP3); SMI, Sweden (for WP6).

The first WP5 meeting has been held in Amsterdam, to discuss the following issues:

1. Introduction to the Internet-based Monitoring System (IMS)
2. Results 2003-2009 in the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal: TheGroteGriepmeting and Gripenet
3. First experience in Italy, 2008-2009: Influweb
4. New Influenzanet Template Design: templates or websites on the basis of 2-4 concepts, including the general outline of the website, an Influenzanet logo, maps on an European scale.
5. Contact Pattern Data
6. Epiwork IMS European Database
7. Epiwork’s epidemic marketplace: linkage of the IMS database infrastructure of WP5 to the epidemic marketplace platform of WP3 and the epidemic modelling platform of WP4 more »
   

All the IMS (Internet Monitoring System) developed by the different teams taking part to the Epiwork project have started again their surveillance activity in response to the recent swine flu outbreak from Mexico. Concurrently, all the modelling and simulation activities are focused on producing predictions about the spreading of the swine flu and risk maps for the whole world.

On February 2nd and 3rd 2009 we had the first meeting of the Epiwork project on Developing the framework for and epidemic forecast infrastructure.

The Epiwork project has been funded by the European Commission in the research area: ICT-2007.8.4 Science of complex systems for socially intelligent ICT, under the 7th FWP (Seventh Framework Programme).