Outbreak detectionMimicking the human immune system to detect outbreaks faster

Published 10 April 2018

Our immune systems are made up of billions of white blood cells searching for signs of infections and foreign invaders, ready to raise the alarm. Sandia National Laboratories computer scientists have been working to improve the U.S. biosurveillance system that alerts authorities to disease outbreaks by mimicking the human immune system.

Our immune systems are made up of billions of white blood cells searching for signs of infections and foreign invaders, ready to raise the alarm.

Sandia National Laboratories computer scientists Pat Finley and Drew Levin have been working to improve the U.S. biosurveillance system that alerts authorities to disease outbreaks by mimicking the human immune system. They are working with researchers at the University of New Mexico and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC coordinates the National Syndromic Surveillance Program. It collects anonymized data from most emergency departments around the nation and analyzes public health indicators to speed up the response to hazardous events and disease outbreaks.

“The national biosurveillance system serves essentially the same purpose as the human immune system, just on a larger scale,” said Levin, who started working on the project as a UNM graduate student and was hired by Sandia to continue his work after he graduated. “The immune system is made up of numerous T-cells that all operate independently. There’s no centralized controller and yet we do pretty well not dying.”

The CDC uses traditional statistical analyses to look for anomalies, such as a large or sudden increase in ER visits, and determine the likelihood of an outbreak. These algorithms are based on reliable, decades-old math but usually only look at one variable at a time, said Levin.

The faster an emerging outbreak is detected, the more lives are saved; however, flagging non-outbreaks can waste resources.

Finley said the biosurveillance system has the dual challenge of detecting new outbreaks of old diseases, such as seasonal influenza, as well as outbreaks of new diseases, such as the next Zika virus, a very tough problem. However, it is a problem the immune system has been working on for millions of years.