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In addition to support for electronic documents and messaging (using IBM's Healthcare Collaborative Network technology), IHII includes support for simulation and analysis tools. One such new tool, STEM, focuses on studying emerging infectious diseases.
The Spatio–Temporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM)
A potentially powerful tool for scientists and public health officials for understanding and planning more efficient responses to the spread of infectious diseases. Invented at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, STEM facilitates the creation of advanced mathematical models involving multiple populations and interactions between diseases to promote better understanding of epidemiology and to provide new tools for protecting population health.
By using comprehensive data on geopolitical boundaries, populations, and transportation networks, combined with data on infection rates and the availability of vaccines, STEM simulates the geographic spread of an infectious disease over extended time periods. By adjusting the variables—such as when airports might get closed, or when a vaccine could be distributed to a certain population—public health officials can gain insight into the many epidemiological and economic ramifications their decisions could create.
This video (2 min, 2 MB) [STEM1.avi], created with STEM, shows a simulation of the 1918 Spanish Flu starting near Boston as it did in 1918, with 20 people infected in two counties near Boston. In this simulation, however, the pandemic takes place in a modern America with interstate highways, air travel, and other modern conveyances and medical advances. (The parameters have also been adjusted to speed up the spread of the disease for video purposes.)
IBM designed STEM as a base upon which software developers and researchers can build other useful applications. IBM made the prototype code available on its early-release Web site (alphaWorks), to allow developers to explore its potential and provide guidance for its further development, and on June 8, 2007, the company announced that it had released STEM as an open-source technology through the Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework Project. As an open-source project, the global collaboration and knowledge underlying STEM's algorithms and data sets could benefit countries and populations currently underserved by public health research. IBM is also collaborating with leading universities and other institutions to evolve this technology, using STEM to run multiple computer simulations based on real-world situations to identify and create the best policy, treatment and prevention options in the event of an epidemic.
Project Checkmate
A research collaboration (with the Scripps Research Institute) with the objective to anticipate, manage and contain infectious diseases. The project uses the capabilities of supercomputing in IBM's Blue Gene with computational biology algorithms, biopatterning and microfluidics research, along with Scripps's knowledge of biochemical modeling and drug discovery.
In the simplest terms, Project Checkmate is using advanced computing to determine the most likely, most infectious, and most lethal mutations the H5N1 virus might undergo, and then to help determine the best vaccine against such mutations. It represents a "first" for the fields of epidemiology and infectious diseases, since all previous vaccines have been created to combat existing, rather than expected, virus mutations, often with a "wait-and-see" approach which produces and deploys the vaccine often before knowing with any certainty whether that particular mutation will, in fact, turn out to be the most lethal and transmissible.
Project Checkmate, on the other hand, could provide much-needed information about the avian flu virus's future state before it has reached that state—which could even allow pharmaceutical manufacturers to have a vaccine ready in time to head off what might otherwise become a deadly global bird flu pandemic.
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