Battling infectious diseases with emerging technologies

There is no more challenging, loving and rewarding job than being a parent. The moment light hits your newborn’s skin, you are also hit by a wave of new responsibilities. The hospital staff congratulates your new family addition and at the same time hands over a set of pre-planned pediatric appointments to help checking on your newborn’s health and development.

At the first appointment you suddenly realize your baby’s first vaccine is due. Depending on your beliefs you might fully trust the pediatrician and let him/her apply the first dosage. However, you might also nicely thank the doctor for reminding you on the benefits of vaccination and opt for a vaccine-free child.

?Infectious diseases epidemics growth

Despite all controversies and debates happening worldwide about the benefits and side effects of vaccines, it is noticeable the increase on the number of infectious diseases epidemics. Since 2017, for instance, a significant increase on the number of measles outbreaks all over the world was observed. Alone in New South Wales, Australia, there have been at least 10 measles warnings issued since the beginning of 2019.

Figure 1 – Map of locations where a person spent time while infectious with measles. Source: https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/alerts/Pages/measles-alert-cbd-pyrmont.aspx

Challenges Faced by Public Health Institutions

Public health institutions are responsible to act on outbreaks, deciding on the timing and type of warn to release to the public. These actions could be challenged by the rising costs associated with properly treating and avoiding proliferation of the diseases. An alternative to automate and reduce the current number of cases could be met with emerging technologies in order to overcome these challenges.

So, how can we make usage of emerging technologies to protect highly endangered individuals, like newborns and seniors from an outbreak? The answer is simple: by using a digital platform to help identify high risk areas and speed up prevention responses.

Digital Platform Approach

Figure 2 – Emerging technologies usage to protect communities.

Figure 2 above shows how a digital platform can support:

1. Collect details on vaccination rates across regions and on current and past outbreaks;
2. Import and process data in a unique platform, providing a single source of truth for further engaging native technology capabilities;
3. Geo-spatially process location data, combining – in real-time – its insights with machine learning algorithms for better understanding and preventing outbreaks;
4. Share results and insights with health and government institutions, schools and home care providers.

By using detailed information like geo-location of affected individuals, a timeline can be built on top of a world map, trying to identify:

-       community disease risk (herd immunity) where there is a higher incidence of non-vaccinated individuals;

-       specific movements and trend areas where an outbreak incidence is higher;

-       proximity of high-risk incidence areas to low herd immunity.

The Value of Advanced Analytics

This, combined with specific machine learning algorithms could help identify patterns, mapping those into clusters to better understand the movement of epidemics and help prevent further incidents. These algorithms could help leverage non-obvious behavior in the collected data, opening space to efficiently consider different possibilities which wouldn’t be noticed otherwise.

Figure 3 – Spatial Clustering

Although we cannot guarantee the use of emerging technologies can help eradicate infectious diseases, it can definitely be used to automate the way those are being tracked as well as to speed up the timing response once new cases are being reported, especially on low community (herd) immunity.

Do you want to learn more? We are here to help!

To learn more about how SAP has been working together with partners on the Health Care space, take a look at this blog. And click here if you are interested in learning how SAP can help your digital transformation journey.