Last week, biomedical informatics researchers at "The" Ohio State University announced they had taken a series of technical steps to make a geospatially focused virus tracking software, SUPRAMAP, available to other researchers and public health officials. The software, which began its development in 2007 as a cooperative effort between the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), had previously been used to visualize the spread and evolution of pandemic (H1N1) and avian influenza (H5N1). However, in order to increase the utility and use of the software, the original client and server elements have now been decoupled so that individuals outside the Ohio State development team can use a web service to try, "...new ideas, data, and clients to create novel applications.” To learn more, use the links below to read a news release from the OSC, visit the SUPRAMAP Home Page, or view an overview video:
Comment: BINGO! Finally somebody in the biomedical informatics community that "gets it". Effective virus outbreak tracking is not about filling in county outlines with different colors to relate progression of spread. Pretty....but basically worthless beyond use as an overview tool. To truly understand the factors at work, granularity is needed; and that's exactly what this effort is all about.
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