BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS FOR
INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH,
OPERATIONS, AND POLICY

Proceedings of a Workshop

Joe Alper, Rapporteur

Forum on Microbial Threats

Board on Global Health

Health and Medicine Division

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington, DC
www.nap.edu

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS500 Fifth Street, NWWashington, DC 20001

This project was supported by Contract No. 200-2011-38807 (Task Order No. 38), Contract No. DJF-16-1200-P-0002127, Contract No. 1R13FD005335-01, Contract No. ICD_620644, Contract No. APA-2015-6885, Contract No. HHSN26300055, Contract No. HT9404-12-1-0009, Contract No. GHN-G-00-07-00001-00, Contract No. W81XWH-14-P-0339, Contract No. HSHQDC-15-C-00043, and Contract No. VA250-16-P-1998 between the National Academy of Sciences and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Food and Drug Administration, Johnson & Johnson, Merck Company Foundation, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/National Institutes of Health, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, respectively, and by the American Society for Microbiology, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Sanofi Pasteur, and the Skoll Global Threats Fund. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or agency that provided support for the project.

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-45011-9
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-45011-X
Digital Object Identifier: 10.17226/23654

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Suggested citation: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Big data and analytics for infectious disease research, operations, and policy: Proceedings of a workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23654.

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PLANNING COMMITTEE FOR THE WORKSHOP ON BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH, OPERATIONS, AND POLICY¹

LONNIE KING (Chair), Acting Dean and Vice President for Agricultural Administration, College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, The Ohio State University

SCOTT DOWELL, Deputy Director for Surveillance and Epidemiology, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

JENNIFER GARDY, Assistant Professor, School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia

MARGARET HAMBURG, Foreign Secretary, National Academy of Medicine; Former Commissioner, Food and Drug Administration

KENT KESTER, Vice President and Head, Translational Science and Biomarkers, Sanofi Pasteur

GEORGE POSTE, Chief Scientist, Complex Adaptive Systems Institute, and Del E. Webb Professor of Health Innovation, Arizona State University

MARTIN SEPÚLVEDA, Retired Vice President, Integrated Health Services and IBM Fellow, IBM Corporation

JAY SIEGEL, Chief Biotechnology Officer and Head of Scientific Strategy and Policy, Johnson & Johnson Corporation

LANCE WALLER, Rollins Professor and Chair, Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University

Staff

GURU MADHAVAN, Project Director

V. AYANO OGAWA, Associate Program Officer

MARIA LUND DAHLBERG, Associate Program Officer, Office of Communications

PRIYANKA NALAMADA, Senior Program Assistant

ALLISON BERGER, Senior Program Assistant

FAYE HILLMAN, Financial Officer

CARMEN MUNDACA-SHAH, Director, Forum on Microbial Threats

PATRICK KELLEY, Senior Director, Board on Global Health

RACHEL TAYLOR, Director, Forum on Public–Private Partnerships for Global Health and Safety, Health and Medicine Division

___________________

¹ The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s planning committees are solely responsible for organizing the workshop, identifying topics, and choosing speakers. The responsibility for the published Proceedings of a Workshop rests with the workshop rapporteur and the institution.

ROSE MARIE MARTINEZ, Senior Director, Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice, Health and Medicine Division

MICHELLE SCHWALBE, Director, Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, Board on Mathematical Sciences and Their Applications, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences

MARILEE DAVENPORT-SHELTON, Senior Program Officer, Board on Life Sciences, Division on Earth and Life Studies

KEVIN FINNERAN, Director, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, Policy and Global Affairs Division

PROCTOR REID, Director, National Academy of Engineering Program Office

Consultant

JOE ALPER, Science Writer

Reviewers

This Proceedings of a Workshop has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published Proceedings of a Workshop as sound as possible and to ensure that the Proceedings of a Workshop meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this Proceedings of a Workshop:

Jonathan M. Carlson, Microsoft Research

Joseph M. Jasinski, Smarter Healthcare and Life Sciences at IBM Research

Catherine Ordun, Booz Allen Hamilton

Thomas Schenk, City of Chicago

Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they did not see the final draft of the Proceedings of a Workshop before its release. The review of this Proceedings of a Workshop was overseen by Linda A. McCauley, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University. She was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this Proceedings of a Workshop was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this Proceedings of a Workshop rests entirely with the rapporteur and the institution.

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Acknowledgments

The Forum on Microbial Threats staff and planning committee deeply appreciate the many valuable contributions from individuals who assisted us with this project.

First, we offer our profound thanks to all of the presenters and discussants at the workshop who gave so generously of their time and expertise. The symposium presentations were both interesting and stimulating. Speakers, in alphabetical order, were Assaf Anyamba, David Frost Attaway, Francisco Becerra, Luciana Borio, Guillaume Chabot-Couture, Scott F. Dowell, William DuMouchel, Victor J. Dzau, Michael Edelstein, Jennifer Gardy, Dale Griffin, Simon I. Hay, James M. Hughes, Kent Kester, Lonnie J. King, Emil Lesho, Jonna Mazet, Catherine Ordun, George Poste, David A. Relman, Alton D. Romig, Jr., Adam Sadilek, Tom Schenk, Martin J. Sepúlveda, Jay P. Siegel, William So, and Lance A. Waller. Their biographical sketches are provided in Appendix B.

We are also grateful to Carissa Etienne and her staff, including Fredy Aviles, Sofía Benegas, Alex Romero, and Lourdes Withrow for graciously hosting the workshop at the Pan American Health Organization’s headquarters building.

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Contents

Acronyms and Abbreviations

1 Introduction

2 Big Data and Global Health

A Big Data Tipping Point

Systems Thinking and Partnerships in Using Big Data for Health Surveillance

Sources of Data Applicable to Health Monitoring

The Emerging Science of Big Data Analytics

3 Opportunities and Challenges for Big Data and Analytics

Defining and Using Big Data

Shifting to a Prevention Paradigm for Emerging Infectious Diseases

Potential Opportunities for Big Data to Help Map Diseases

Predicting Disease Outbreaks

Discussion

Digital Disease Detection

Big Data Architecture and Analytics

Combating Microbial Resistance with Big Data

4 Case Studies in Big Data and Analysis

Satellite Data in Vector-Borne Disease Research

Big Data at the Food and Drug Administration

Modeling Adverse Drug Reactions

Big Data to Improve Delivery of Public Services

Security and Health Care Systems

Investigating the Natural Background Distribution of Pathogens

GIS and Vector-Borne Diseases

Modeling the Spread of Disease at Scale

5 Closing Remarks and General Discussion

The Value of Big Data

Potential Future Collaborations

Final Thoughts

References

Appendixes

A Workshop Agenda

B Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers

C Statement of Task

Figures and Tables

FIGURES

3-1 (A) The spillover of zoonotic diseases from wildlife to humans;
(B) Reducing the impact of zoonotic disease on humans

3-2 Network diagram of the transmission interfaces of every zoonotic virus in the past 20 years

3-3 Occurrence map for dengue drawn from a literature survey and archived data

3-4 Prioritizing infectious disease mapping targets

3-5 Mapping environmental suitability for Zika virus

3-6 Retrospective predictive modeling of measles outbreaks compared to reported cases for the fourth quarter of 2015

3-7 The many possible components of a data architecture

4-1 Risk map and outbreaks for Rift Valley Fever

4-2 Total number of whole genome sequences in the FDA’s GenomeTrakr database

4-3 Elemental distributions for calcium and phosphorus as compared with recorded anthrax outbreaks and counties with no reported outbreaks

4-4 Regions of high risk and low risk for dengue outbreaks in Kenya

4-5 Areas suitable for year-round Aedes mosquito activity based on environmental and population variables

4-6 Contact with sick individuals increases the chances of getting sick

TABLES

3-1 Viral Detection Results from PREDICT’s First 5 Years of Operations

3-2 PREDICT Virus Detection Results by Viral Family

Acronyms and Abbreviations