Indian scientist reveals disease outbreaks via mobiles

By SiliconIndia
Monday, 18 October 2010, 11:57 IST


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London: For some, these mobile phones are source of communication and for others, they are entertainment and business phones. Now it can be used to fight diseases. According to study led by Indian scientist Anmol Madan, the cell phones could be a key tool to fight against diseases by relaying a telltale signature of illness to doctors and agencies monitoring new outbreaks, reports Jim Giles from NewScientist.


"This technology is an early warning system," New Scientist quoted Anmol Madan, PhD candidate in the Human Dynamics Group at the MIT Media Lab. Madan's team concluded that you could spot cases of flu by looking for changes in the movement and communication patterns of infected people.

This technology could be an early warning system to enable the users to spot outbreaks of influenza. Epidemiologists know that disease outbreaks change mobility patterns, but until now have been unable to track these patterns in any detail.

Madan and colleagues gave cellphones to 70 students in an undergraduate dormitory. The phones came with software that supplied the team with anonymous data on the students' movements, phone calls and text messages. The students also completed daily surveys on their mental and physical health.

A characteristic signature of illness emerged from the data, which was gathered over a 10-week period in early 2009. Students who came down with a fever or full-blown flu tended to move around less and make fewer calls late at night and early in the morning.

When Madan trained software to hunt for this signature in the cellphone data, a daily check correctly identified flu victims 90 percent of the time. The technique could be used to monitor the health status of individuals who live alone.

Madan is developing a smartphone app that will alert a named contact, perhaps a relative or doctor, when a person's communication and movement patterns suggest that they are ill.

Public health officials could also use the technique to spot emerging outbreaks of illness ahead of conventional detection systems, which today rely on reports from doctors and virus-testing labs.

Madan presented the findings at the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing in Copenhagen, last month.


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Reader's comments (2)
1: Here is some more information.
Mobile Phones as Outbreak Predictors? Jenara Nerenberg Wed Sep 22, 2010
A new global consortium wants to predict disease outbreaks in a matter of 24 hours(Fast Company):


An all-star consortium in South Asia wants to maximize the potential of mobile health care by identifying epidemics within 24 hours, compared to the standard two to three weeks it normally takes in countries such as Sri Lanka. The partners include the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Carnegie Mellon University's Auton Lab, LIRNEasia, the University of Alberta, and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), among others, and together the effort is called the Real Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP). The group is conducting ongoing research to see how a comprehensive disease surveillance system could work in rural areas via mobiles.
The mobile phone as a health delivery vehicle is not new, with examples ranging from Vodafone to ISIS and others, but the fact that a global consortium has come together to push forward mobile health signifies that there is indeed room to innovate. In addition to allowing users to text questions and receive answers and in addition to having trained workers log info about disease reports in rural areas in real-time, the RTBP is working on reducing the time required to identify outbreaks and epidemics to just one day, which is significant when you consider just how inefficient the alternative surveillance bodies are, namely government institutions, which can take weeks or months to get into gear.
"The system was useful because of recent outbreaks of communicable diseases, with health authorities only aware of an outbreak when the media reported the death of several people. With the new system, data on patients and symptoms of illnesses are sent through mobile phones in real-time from hospital wards to the epidemiological centre. This enables quick analysis of data and detection of patterns of disease that could provide early warning of potential outbreaks enabling health authorities to act,"

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP)
Posted by: Dr.A.Jagadeesh - 19 Oct, 2010