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

Inaccurate summary

[solafide]

They're not using the PageRank algorithm itself, but an algorithm similar to how they conjecture Google works. In actuality, they're building a graph of interactions and finding the most linked to nodes, which is a fairly easy graph problem and nothing too exciting. It's the novelity of using this in hospitals that makes it notable. The PageRank reference is just for media attention/allowing non-compsci people to understand it, though.

backwards

[nguy]

Markov chains are the original, mathematical theory. This is just an application of Markov chains to tracking disease transmission, a fairly common method that long pre-dates Google. Google's page rank algorithm is another application of Markov chains to citation ranking (and, as it turns out, it wasn't the first time that it was applied to that either).

Re:backwards

[davidsyes]

Hell, part of this could be stemmed by:

-- installing or increasing more air-locks/decontamination/containment/quarantine areas
-- improving anti-bacterial ventilation and air cleaning/recirculation equipment
-- setting up scanners points to look for flush/sickly people who emit fumes of certain bug signatures

-- make the doctors and staff ALL wear anti-microbial/bacterial surgical masks EVEN FOR NON-SURGICAL visits (hey, they may be amped on anti-biotics, but aren't they still carriers?)

-- emulate (if not doing so already) practices of the travel/cruise industry which separates various linens according to bacterial or viral risk (using color-coded collection bins) to keep certain bugs out of warm linens while keeping less contaminated items from contact. This reduces staff exposure time to numerous critters

Most of all, given today's mass-travel economy/environment, hospitals and clinics should not be "walk-in-as-you-will" facilities. They should have screening or quarantine areas to separate and manage ENTRY of DETECTABLE vermin/air-borne agents. (Might even spark wild, new hospital designs, create jobs, and give politicians something new to do...)

For any interest in medical and tourism practices in effect, see:

http://www.riph.org.uk/pdf/healthAndHygieneOctober2003.pdf

http://www.bundesbank.de/download/meldewesen/bankenstatistik/kundensystematik/naics_2007_canada.pdf

http://chfs.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/4614B679-B2EB-4DD8-A486-C4FFDA7A542D/0/CommunityContainmentSupplement1.doc

http://www.hhs.gov/pandemicflu/plan/sup8.html

Re:backwards

[Arthur B.]

These are very interesting thoughts, and I do share your belief that hospital should become more stringent in the future.

I'd just like to point out that "it would create jobs" is no argument at all though. In fact if it didn't create any jobs, it would mean hospitals like these rained from heaven and we would all be better off. The least jobs it creates, the cheaper it is to have, the better it is.

no ties!

[Davak]

For purely selfish reasons I love that the superbugs invasion means I no longer have to wear ties when seeing my patients. Now if I could just figure out a way to get rid of my nasty pager. :)

Re:no ties!

[haystor]

I'd start by demonstrating the strong correlation between the pager going off and someone being in need of a doctor. Clearly if you get rid of the pager, fewer people would be in distress.

Re:Yes, Math Works

[MoonFog]

Indeed it is!

But does America CARE yet? It should.

[jackpot777]

Strange question, do they care yet, but worth asking. Here's why.

In 2005, Britain's going nucking futs over MRSA. It was used as a reason to justify taking the NHS (National Health Service. Translation: universal healthcare) and molding it into whatever each Party wanted the world to be like. You couldn't pick up a newspaper without SuperBug this or SuperBug that on the front page.

Meanwhile, in America, the sound of crickets gently chirp. Chreeeep, chreeeep, chreeeep. Nobody gave a tinker's cuss about MRSA. At all.

OK. That's the scene. People in Britain thinking that MRSA is going to turn the country into 28 Days Later. America thinks MRSA is some rapper's name.

And then the official numbers came out for MRSA deaths for that year.

England/Wales, in 2005: 1629 deaths.

United States, in 2005: 18,650 deaths.

There are more people in the States than England and Wales. So I looked up the numbers for the land of the free and the home of the Whopper and Pommie/Limey/Rosbif-TaffyLandSheepCountry.

US population at the time - 295 million.

Eng-Cym population in the last census (and it won't have doubled from 2001-2005) - 52 million.

So what were the chances this would have killed YOU? Well, remote (if you're reading this now), but what about back then? The equation is:

[population of the country in 2005] / [deaths from MRSA there in 2005]
= [chance of being killed by MRSA in 2005].

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.

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

And now I'm going to pretend to be really stupid here: I could be spectacularly wrong, but it LOOKS like the numbers prove a person was twice more likely to kick the bucket from MRSA in the States than in Blighty (OK, England and Wales. I'll let someone else add Scotland and Northern Ireland to the mix). America, with its pay-as-you-go health system making monster profits, not as good as a system some people would tell you is on its last legs.

What was even funnier (maybe 'funnier' isn't quite the right word) was the excuse used in the UK National Statistics Office for why their number was so HIGH:

Some of the recent increase in mentions of MRSA on death certificates may be due to improved levels of reporting, possibly brought about by the continued high public profile of the disease.

This is either the longest and most researched Flaimbait ever to appear on SlashDot, or I just blew. Your. Freaking. Mind.

Unless you're American: in which case, just think of this like the slang you don't understand in Doctor Who, words like 'chav' and 'ASBO'.

Re:maybe not, but other connections are known

[damburger]

But that goes against the market orthodoxy of our times. Remember, public services exist only to be privatised, piece by piece. Socialised medicine doesn't work! That's why the UK has a lower infant mortality rate and higher life expectancy than the US!

How antibacterials work - It is NOT just soap

[arete]

"Antibacterial" household products contain something different than soap. What thing that is, varies.

I'm not a chemist or a doctor. And I assume that if this is mistaken in any way, someone will correct me, since this is /. after all.

For household use you don't need antibacterial agents to effectively wash your hands - because the act of actual abrasion with the surface-tension eliminating properties of soap removes most things from your skin. For the most part, your hands don't harbor a lot of problems IN the surface, because your body is busy killing that.

In my opinion, there are also two major classes of these antibacterial agents - which I'll classify as "simple" and "complex" To my knowledge, it's extremely difficult and rare for bacteria to become resist to "simple" antibacterial agents.

Simple antibacterial agents are things that kill everything. Like bleach (e.g. Chlorox), or high concentrations of alcohol (e.g. Glass Plus). To a lesser extent vinegar, ammonia, salt... These things are not necessarily good for people, but people are really big and can avoid drinking them in really high doses... but they're still really bad for bacteria etc to swim completely in and they get annihilated, because these things basically just melt cell walls.

For the most part these are quite safe to clean with... they don't especially build up in your system, so as long as you never get a super high dose, usually by breathing or drinking it, you're safe. But I don't recommend you swim in bleach, get it in your eyes, and drink it either. Those example cleaners are relatively harmless in most controlled cleaning situations - but there are plenty of options in this category that aren't - like strong acids - we just don't usually put them in consumer cleaners in high doses.

So I have no objection to, say, a little bleach being added to surface cleaners.

The antibiotics you take orally are wildly different, and must be complex. They can't be TOO bad for you, or they'd be rat poison and not a drug. So they try to attack something bacteria-cell specific that human cells are immune to. But bacteria operate in a range of ways, so often this only works on some bacteria. And they mutate... so the more specific and narrow the antibiotic is, the easier it is for the bacteria to become immune. The broader it is, the more likely it hurts you.

Some companies - because it's what the uneducated consuming public wants - are putting vaguely these kind of agents in household cleaning products. Not EXACTLY the same drugs we're taking orally. But chemicals that have narrow, complex effects on bacteria, which probably encourage mutation. Those mutations may or may not impact the effectiveness of current or future drugs.

HOWEVER, as much as I think antibacterial hand soap is pretty high on the list of evils, it's not NEARLY as bad as the number of people who merely don't finish the antibiotics they were prescribed. Those people are ruining the world.