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."

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[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: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.

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'.