Briefs

Bioterrorism Surveillance at the Olympic Games Artificial Intelligence early warning system just installed

February 11, 2002. Menlo Park, CA. -- The U.S. has never seen security measures like those now in Salt Lake City for the Olympics. One little known measure, just put into place, gives early warning of a possible bioterrorist attack. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) computer system analyzes patient data from emergency rooms and instant care facilities across the state. If it detects a significant pattern, it pages the on-call state public health physician.

President Bush sees a demonstration

On February 5, while President Bush was visiting Pittsburgh, praised the demonstration he saw of the Realtime Outbreak and Disease Surveillance (RODS.) The RODS system was developed collaboratively between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. RODS has been in use in Western Pennsylvania since late 1999. In his speech following the demonstration, President Bush called RODS "innovative", and an "incredibly useful tool for America ... to protect ourselves ... (from) insidious biological attack."

Installing RODS in Utah

As Bush viewed the system in Pittsburgh, Per Gesteland, M.D., was working with a team in Utah to finish installing RODS in time for the Olympics. They were on a very tight timeframe. Gesteland learned of the system during a talk in November given by RODS creator Michael Wagner, M.D., Director of the Biomedical Security Institute and a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh.

In less than two months, Gesteland's team was able to ready the system. It now covers 80% of the state, including the entire geographic area of the Olympics. It takes data from 80% of the health care systems in the region, including Intermountain Health Care, the official provider of health care for the Olympics.

AI for anti-terrorism

"The RODS system is a first step in a direction you'll see a lot more of over the coming five years," observes Tom Mitchell, Fredkin Professor of AI and Learning at Carnegie Mellon University, and President of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. "It's pretty obvious that a lot can be done with AI machine learning and data mining algorithms if you take the trouble to link data sources together. September 11 is motivating us to take the trouble to link together the data to find general trends and anomalous events."

RODS (Real-time Outbreak Detection System): What it does

RODS is an early warning system to assist health care personnel in the early interception and treatment of an outbreak - not just from bioterrorism. Since September 11, however, bioterrorism has taken center stage. "Almost any organism or pathogen can be weaponized and contaminate lots of people simultaneously," explains RODS principal investigator Michael Wagner, M.D., Director of the Biomedical Security Institute and a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh. "By the time a clinician diagnoses it correctly, it could be too late to do anything because it could be so far advanced and very widespread by contagion. Catching the first case or two can have enormous value in preventing contagious second and third waves."

The RODS system collects and analyzes relevant data such as emergency room registration data and lab results. It uses several Artificial Intelligence techniques for machine learning, natural language and data mining.

Public health services using RODS can review vast amounts of data from very large geographical areas to detect alarming trends across a number of patients quickly. If the system finds a number of patients complaining of respiratory problems, a rash, or a collapse, for instance, RODS automatically pages the public health official on call who can review the individual cases and take appropriate action.

RODS was initially installed in Western Pennsylvania in August of 1999 for public health surveillance for the 3 million residents of 13 counties. So far, the system has detected only a naturally occurring outbreak of influenza. It is now being extended to all of Pennsylvania. Other public health departments in the U.S. are now showing interest in RODS. Given how quickly it was installed in Utah, Wagner believes it could also be implemented in other states fairly quickly.

For more information, see RODS Home Page: http://www.health.pitt/edu/RODS/rods.htm