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Software to Facilitate Remote Sensing Data Access for Disease Early Warning Systems.

ABSTRACT: Satellite remote sensing produces an abundance of environmental data that can be used in the study of human health. To support the development of early warning systems for mosquito-borne diseases, we developed an open-source, client based software application to enable the Epidemiological Applications of Spatial Technologies (EASTWeb). Two major design decisions were full automation of the discovery, retrieval and processing of remote sensing data from multiple sources, and making the system easily modifiable in response to changes in data availability and user needs. Key innovations that helped to achieve these goals were the implementation of a software framework for data downloading and the design of a scheduler that tracks the complex dependencies among multiple data processing tasks and makes the system resilient to external errors. EASTWeb has been successfully applied to support forecasting of West Nile virus outbreaks in the United States and malaria epidemics in the Ethiopian highlands.

SUBMITTER: Liu Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4669966 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Software to Facilitate Remote Sensing Data Access for Disease Early Warning Systems.

Liu Yi Y Hu Jiameng J Snell-Feikema Isaiah I VanBemmel Michael S MS Lamsal Aashis A Wimberly Michael C MC

Environmental modelling & software : with environment data news 20151201

Satellite remote sensing produces an abundance of environmental data that can be used in the study of human health. To support the development of early warning systems for mosquito-borne diseases, we developed an open-source, client based software application to enable the Epidemiological Applications of Spatial Technologies (EASTWeb). Two major design decisions were full automation of the discovery, retrieval and processing of remote sensing data from multiple sources, and making the system eas ...[more]

PMID: 26644779

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Project description:IntroductionSeveral versions of Early Warning Systems (EWS) are used in obstetrics to detect and treat early clinical deterioration to avert morbidity and mortality. EWS can potentially be useful to improve the quality of care and reduce the risk of maternal mortality in resource-limited settings. We conducted a systematic literature review of published obstetric early warning systems, define their predictive accuracy for morbidity and mortality, and their effectiveness in triggering corrective actions and improving health outcomes.MethodsWe systematically searched for primary research articles on obstetric EWS published in peer-reviewed journals between January 1997 and March 2018 in Medline, CINAHL, SCOPUS, Science Direct, and Science Citation Index. We also searched reference lists of relevant articles and websites of professional societies. We included studies that assessed the predictive accuracy of EWS to detect clinical deterioration, or/and their effectiveness in improving clinical outcomes in obstetric inpatients. We excluded studies with a paediatric or non-obstetric adult population. Cross-sectional and qualitative studies were also excluded. We performed a narrative synthesis since the outcomes reported were heterogeneous.ResultsA total of 381 papers were identified, 17 of which met the inclusion criteria. Eleven of the included studies evaluated the predictive accuracy of EWS for obstetric morbidity and mortality, 5 studies assessed the effectiveness of EWS in improving clinical outcomes, while one study addressed both. Sixteen published EWS versions were reviewed, 14 of which included five basic clinical observations (pulse rate, respiratory rate, temperature, blood pressure, and consciousness level). The obstetric EWS identified had very high median (inter-quartile range) sensitivity-89% (72% to 97%) and specificity-85% (67% to 98%) but low median (inter-quartile range) positive predictive values-41% (25% to 74%) for predicting morbidity or ICU admission. Obstetric EWS had a very high accuracy in predicting death (AUROC >0.80) among critically ill obstetric patients. Obstetric EWS improves the frequency of routine vital sign observation, reduces the interval between the recording of specifically defined abnormal clinical observations and corrective clinical actions, and can potentially reduce the severity of obstetric morbidity.ConclusionObstetric EWS are effective in predicting severe morbidity (in general obstetric population) and mortality (in critically ill obstetric patients). EWS can contribute to improved quality of care, prevent progressive obstetric morbidity and improve health outcomes. There is limited evidence of the effectiveness of EWS in reducing maternal death across all settings. Clinical parameters in most obstetric EWS versions are routinely collected in resource-limited settings, therefore implementing EWS may be feasible in such settings.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) are chronic conditions, but the severity of symptomatic experiences and functional impairments vacillate over the course of illness. Developing unobtrusive remote monitoring systems to detect early warning signs of impending symptomatic relapses would allow clinicians to intervene before the patient's condition worsens. OBJECTIVE:In this study, we aim to create the first models, exclusively using passive sensing data from a smartphone, to predict behavioral anomalies that could indicate early warning signs of a psychotic relapse. METHODS:Data used to train and test the models were collected during the CrossCheck study. Hourly features derived from smartphone passive sensing data were extracted from 60 patients with SSDs (42 nonrelapse and 18 relapse >1 time throughout the study) and used to train models and test performance. We trained 2 types of encoder-decoder neural network models and a clustering-based local outlier factor model to predict behavioral anomalies that occurred within the 30-day period before a participant's date of relapse (the near relapse period). Models were trained to recreate participant behavior on days of relative health (DRH, outside of the near relapse period), following which a threshold to the recreation error was applied to predict anomalies. The neural network model architecture and the percentage of relapse participant data used to train all models were varied. RESULTS:A total of 20,137 days of collected data were analyzed, with 726 days of data (0.037%) within any 30-day near relapse period. The best performing model used a fully connected neural network autoencoder architecture and achieved a median sensitivity of 0.25 (IQR 0.15-1.00) and specificity of 0.88 (IQR 0.14-0.96; a median 108% increase in behavioral anomalies near relapse). We conducted a post hoc analysis using the best performing model to identify behavioral features that had a medium-to-large effect (Cohen d>0.5) in distinguishing anomalies near relapse from DRH among 4 participants who relapsed multiple times throughout the study. Qualitative validation using clinical notes collected during the original CrossCheck study showed that the identified features from our analysis were presented to clinicians during relapse events. CONCLUSIONS:Our proposed method predicted a higher rate of anomalies in patients with SSDs within the 30-day near relapse period and can be used to uncover individual-level behaviors that change before relapse. This approach will enable technologists and clinicians to build unobtrusive digital mental health tools that can predict incipient relapse in SSDs.

Project description:BackgroundEarly warning systems (EWS) are management tools to predict the occurrence of epidemics of infectious diseases. While climate-based EWS have been developed for malaria, no standard protocol to evaluate and compare EWS has been proposed. Additionally, there are several neglected tropical diseases whose transmission is sensitive to environmental conditions, for which no EWS have been proposed, though they represent a large burden for the affected populations.Methodology/principal findingsIn the present paper, an overview of the available linear and non-linear tools to predict seasonal time series of diseases is presented. Also, a general methodology to compare and evaluate models for prediction is presented and illustrated using American cutaneous leishmaniasis, a neglected tropical disease, as an example. The comparison of the different models using the predictive R(2) for forecasts of "out-of-fit" data (data that has not been used to fit the models) shows that for the several linear and non-linear models tested, the best results were obtained for seasonal autoregressive (SAR) models that incorporate climatic covariates. An additional bootstrapping experiment shows that the relationship of the disease time series with the climatic covariates is strong and consistent for the SAR modeling approach. While the autoregressive part of the model is not significant, the exogenous forcing due to climate is always statistically significant. Prediction accuracy can vary from 50% to over 80% for disease burden at time scales of one year or shorter.Conclusions/significancethis study illustrates a protocol for the development of EWS that includes three main steps: (i) the fitting of different models using several methodologies, (ii) the comparison of models based on the predictability of "out-of-fit" data, and (iii) the assessment of the robustness of the relationship between the disease and the variables in the model selected as best with an objective criterion.

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Software to Facilitate Remote Sensing Data Access for Disease Early Warning Systems.

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Software to Facilitate Remote Sensing Data Access for Disease Early Warning Systems.

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