RAPID: Remote Monitoring of Ebola Patients and Their Treating Physicians

提案号：15-14626PI(s): Papanikolopoulos, Nikolaos；Lim, Kelvin o .机构：明尼苏达大学双子城分校（UMN）标题：RAPID：埃博拉患者及其治疗医生的远程监测项目建议：该项目融合了成熟的技术，旨在帮助那些在持续的埃博拉疫情中从事直接患者护理的人员应对当前面临的挑战。也就是说，采用交互式机器视觉技术和智能编码的防护装备来主动协助医疗保健提供者（例如，遵守他们所要求的NIH/CDC（疾病控制中心）安全程序-明确的运动顺序，以适当地穿上消毒的防护覆盖物，然后安全，逐步和控制地移除并随后处置这些现在可能致命的物品）。最近达拉斯地区的两名护士被感染，他们被认为违反了协议，这突显了这一极高标准的重要性，然后疾控中心？随后，美国政府实施了强化的伙伴制度，以更好地确保未来的合规。尽管如此，随着时间压力的增加，人工监控有时会失效，尤其是当程序变成例行公事时。幸运的是，考虑到自动化人类活动和手势识别的进步，以及与外科手术等领域的远程操作辅助方法相结合的严格程序的经验，以及现代图形化和人性化的人机界面，将各自的经验教训整合到创建自动化和交互式伙伴中是一个很容易实现的下一步。显然，这些新知识是有用的。更广泛的影响：应该注意到长期内相对较低的成本。即使是在任何环境下的可移植扩展也可能会付出不成比例的代价，甚至是灾难性的，特别是当参与者未能遵守严格的标准（通常是乏味和不受欢迎的）时。在工业（如洁净室、核设施等）、医学（如手术室）、军事和一些研究领域，记录和登记会议的费用迫使人们完全遵守所要求的安全措施，可能很容易被更好的结果、更少的事故和更低的保险费率所抵消。该项目有助于建立一个由美国国家科学基金会大型获奖者组成的联盟，利用计算机科学的最新技术，共同解决具有国家和全球意义的公共卫生问题。世卫组织小组将协助收集有关埃博拉感染地区使用的防护装备有效性的紧急数据。这项研究将有助于制定新的定量危机地图，以接近实时地估计当地埃博拉病毒传染性区域的传播率，从而加强有效分配最近开发的有限可用疫苗，以减轻埃博拉的传播。此外，它将提供一种机制，通过与区域社会媒体观测结果进行比较，来验证和改进CDC的业务预报模型。它可能使我们第三世界国家的疾病监测和早期发现成为可能。此外，该项目有望推广到其他传染性病毒条件；这项研究使利用未来手持设备的社交媒体健康数据成为可能。尽管有足够多的猜测存在于齿轮的作用，但很少有数据可以推动协议或齿轮本身的变化。除了目前的埃博拉问题之外，拟议的方法和建立联盟的努力将支持解决广泛的公共卫生问题。

Proposal #: 15-14626PI(s): Papanikolopoulos, Nikolaos; Lim, Kelvin O.Institution: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (UMN)Title: RAPID: Remote Monitoring of Ebola Patients and Their Treating Physicians Project Proposed:This project, melding proven technologies, aims to assist in an immediate challenge now facing those engaged in direct patient care in the ongoing Ebola epidemic. Namely, employing interactive machine vision technologies and intelligently encoded protective gear to proactively assist health care providers (e.g., adhering to their required NIH/CDC (Center for Disease Control) Safety Procedures-the explicit movement sequences required for the proper donning of sterilized, protective coverings, and afterwards for the safe, step-wise and controlled removal and subsequent disposition of these now potentially lethal items). The crucial importance of this very high standard was underscored recently by the infection of two Dallas-area nurses where protocols were thought breached, and then by the CDC?s response, which next imposed an enhanced buddy system to better ensure future compliance. Notwithstanding, human monitors can sometimes lapse, especially when procedures become routine, as time pressures mount. Fortunately, incorporating respective lessons learned in the creation of an automated and interactive buddy is a readily achievable next step, given the advances in automated human activity and gesture recognition, with experience of the strict procedures evolved in conjunction with tele-operational assistance methods for domains such as surgery, and with modern graphical and human-friendly man-machine interfaces. Obviously, this new knowledge serves a useful purpose.Broader Impacts:The relatively low cost in the longer term should be noted. Even portable extensions to any environment can be disproportionally costly or even catastrophic, particularly when participants fail to adhere to strict standards (usually tedious and unwelcome). In industry (e.g., clean rooms, nuclear sites, etc.), in medicine (e.g., operating theaters), in the military, and in some research areas, the cost of recording and registering sessions that compel the full compliance to required safety measures might easily be offset by better outcomes, fewer accidents and reduced insurance rates. This project contributes in building a coalition of large NSF awardees to jointly address public health problems of national and global significance using the state of the art in Computer Science. The UMN team will assist in the urgent data collection regarding the effectiveness of the protective gear used in Ebola-infected regions.This research will enable the development of new quantitative crisis maps to approximate local regional rates of infectious Ebola virus spreading in near real time thereby enhancing the effective distribution of limited availability of recently developed vaccines to mitigate the spread of Ebola. Furthermore, it will provide a mechanism for validating and improving operational forecast models of the CDC by comparisons with regional social media observations. It may allow for disease surveillance and early detection among our third world countries. Moreover, this project is expected to be generalizable to other infectious virus conditions; the research enables exploiting social media health data from future hand held devices. Although enough speculation exists about the role of the gear, little data is available to push for changes in the protocols or the gear itself. Beyond the present issue of Ebola, the proposed methodology and the coalition building effort will support solutions in a wide range of public health issues.