Google Algorithm to Search Out Hospital Superbugs

Googling Yourself writes "Researchers in the UK plan to use Google's PageRank algorithm to find how super-bugs like MRSA spread in a hospital setting. Previous studies have discovered how particular objects, like doctors' neckties, can harbor infection, but little is known about the network routes by which bugs spread. Mathematician Simon Shepherd plans to build a matrix describing all interactions between people and objects in a hospital ward, based on observing normal daily activity."

Comments

Re:But does America CARE yet? It should.

[sco08y]

The chances you had of MRSA killing you in England and Wales, with everyone going mental over it, in 2005 - 1 in 32,000.

Chances of dying the same death in a country with market-driven health system, where people are NOT specifically looking for MRSA - 1 in 15,800.

You know, every drug approved in the US is FDA regulated, every medical school is government certified, every person pays taxes into Medicare, and most people get health care through insurance, which is virtually government run... The only "market-driven" aspect of US health care is that you can ignore it and pay cash if you want, so it's fairer to say the US is 95% regulated while the UK is 99%.

I'll let those numbers sink in. British readers might want to look at them again and make sure up is still up.

If my health care system "went nuts" over a disease and only got it down to half of the one that did nothing, yeah, I would want to make sure up is up.

This is either the longest and most researched Flaimbait ever to appear on SlashDot...

Not by a long shot.

wooden cutting boards are awesome

[arete]

wooden cutting boards are awesome - but the explanation I always heard was the tannins etc in the wood being actively antibacterial.

Triclosan

[TheMeuge]

Triclosan is the substance that most "antibacterial" soaps contain. It has very little to do with the development of antibiotic resistance. However, several studies have shown that soap and water are about as effective with it, as without it, in terms of preventing infections.

Development of antibiotic resistance has to do with 3 factors:

1. Overprescription of antibiotics - i.e. giving Abx to someone who has a cold. Whether it's self-medication, or done by an MD is irrelevant in this case.
2. Improper prescription of antibiotics - i.e. not everything in the world can be cured with a 5-day course of Azithromycin (Zithromax). Too many doctors just hand it out like candy. We should really rely on testing for bug susceptibility in many more cases than we do now.
3. Improper use of antibiotics - i.e. not finishing the course. This is an old problem, that seems to have no solution, especially when it comes to the "internet-know-it-all" patients... who think that 5 minutes of googling qualifies them to self-medicate at will.

Re:Inaccurate summary

[Mr. Underbridge]

Sounds like you just described the PageRank TM algorithm in general. Remember, the "Page" in PageRank TM is for the founders name, not web pages. It is not the complexity of the math, but of the ability to solve equations on a large scale quickly over the distributed systems that makes the Google methods so powerful in solving these "simple" math problems.

He described a Markov model, of which PageRank is a variant.

Mod parent up and grandparent down

[jbengt]

I repeat, Mod parent up and grandparent down

Re:backwards

[u38cg]

The simplest way of improving hospital hygiene is to wash things. In particular, hands. Every time you walk into a hospital you should wash your hands before you go up to reception. Was your hands after touching a door. Wash your hands before entering a ward. Wash your hands before interacting with a patient. Wash your hands after interacting with a patient. Enforce these rules for staff and visitors.

This is really simple stuff, it would have a massive effect on infection rates, but nobody will do it because hospital staff are too lazy to do it, and they won't enforce it on visitors either.