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Reprinted from Canadian Healthcare Technology, October 2012 issue M illions of people travelled to London, England this sum- mer for the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. While their arrival provided an economic boon to the city, these visitors also brought with them infectious diseases that could have caused outbreaks during and after the Games. To ensure that Lon- don was prepared for such an outbreak, a multidisciplinary team in Toronto worked with public health officials in the UK to anticipate epidemic threats using Bio.Diaspora – an award-winning soft- ware platform that uses Web mapping technology to study global air traffic pat- terns and the international spread of infectious diseases. Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious disease physician and scientist at St. Michael's Hospital, was inspired to develop Bio.Diaspora in 2003 after observing the health and economic consequences of SARS in Toronto. The outbreak devastated the city, resulting in dozens of deaths and an estimated $2 billion in economic damages. "There has been limited research into the role of air travel as a conduit for the spread of infectious dis- eases," says Dr. Khan. "We took this as an opportunity to create a system that would allow us to study how people, and consequently, how infectious diseases, can spread worldwide. Having this knowledge helps us to better prepare for epidemics before they occur and respond to them intelligently when they arise." An early warning system for emerging global infectious disease threats: To devel- op Bio.Diaspora, Dr. Khan's team integrat- ed geographic information system (GIS) technology from Esri with business analyt- ics and computing software. Through GIS, they have combined a wide range of data including worldwide passenger ticket sales, global flight schedules and real-time flight status data; then visually analyze the infor- mation using intelligent Web maps. "The Bio.Diaspora architecture enables us to quickly perform analytics, visualize findings through maps, share them via the Web, and consequently transform our research findings into actionable informa- tion in real time," he explains. GIS allows them to create different types of maps including heat maps, con- tour maps and simulations. These maps help answer key questions such as: How many international passengers arrived in a particular city at a specific time? Where are the vulnerable points of entry in this region? What's the probability of the spread of an infectious disease based on a defined set of criteria? Meanwhile, business analytics software is leveraged to analyze passenger flow vol- umes, identify routes and transit points used most frequently by international pas- sengers, and examine traffic trends over time. As well, technical computing soft- ware is used for data analysis and numeric computation. To provide real-time situational aware- ness of global infectious diseases, the team integrated Bio.Diaspora with HealthMap, an online infectious disease surveillance system created at Harvard University that monitors reports and warnings of out- breaks on the Web at a local or regional level. This system provides valuable insights into where infectious disease threats are emerging in the world and where they are most likely to spread. Enabling proactive infectious disease management: Information gleaned from Bio.Diaspora is now being used to interact with policy makers to strengthen global preparedness and response to infectious disease threats. While previous applica- tions were conducted largely from an aca- demic perspective, the collaboration with health officials in the UK for the 2012 Summer Olympics was the first time the system was used in an operational manner to facilitate near-real-time infectious disease risk assessments during a mass gathering. Bio.Diaspora aided health officials by helping connect information on global infectious disease outbreaks with knowledge of global patterns of travel to London. This analysis helped them identify which inter- national outbreaks were at greatest risk of spreading to London. Trav- ellers to London were advised to check their immunity to measles, one of the most highly contagious diseases known to exist. A truly visionary system for tracking and predicting infectious diseases, Bio.Diaspora won the Computerworld Honors Laureate Award for Innovation in 2011. For the significant benefit it delivers in strengthening global public health security, it's worthy of an Olympic Gold. More information about Esri Canada is available at esri.ca. Canadian Web mapping aids epidemic planning for London Olympics www.canhealth.com

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