Center for Neuropsychiatric Research, National Health Research Institutes, Zhunan, Miaoli, Taiwan; Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; Department of Public Health, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Public Sector, Microsoft Taiwan, Taipei, Taiwan.
Biomed J. 2020 Aug;43(4):318-324. doi: 10.1016/j.bj.2020.06.007. Epub 2020 Jun 20.
Aggressive tracing of contacts of confirmed cases is crucial to Taiwan's successful control of the early spread of COVID-19. As the pandemic lingers, an epidemiological investigation that can be conducted efficiently in a timely manner can help decrease the burden on the health personnel and increase the usefulness of such information in decision making. To develop a new tool that can improve the current practice of epidemiological investigation by incorporating new technologies in digital platform and knowledge graphs. To meet the various needs of the epidemiological investigation, we decided to develop an e-Outbreak Platform that provides a semi-structured, multifaceted, computer-aided questionnaire for outbreak investigation. There are three major parts of the platform: (1) a graphic portal that allows users to have an at-glance grasp of the functions provided by the platform and then choose the one they need; (2) disease-specific questionnaires that can accommodate different formats of the information, including text typing, button selection, and pull-down menu; and (3) functions to utilize the stored information, including report generation, statistical analyses, and knowledge graphs displaying contact tracing. When the number of outbreak investigation increases, the knowledge graphs can be extended to encompass other persons appearing in the same location at the same time, i.e., constituting a potential contact cluster. The information extracted can also be used to display the tracing on a map in animation. Overall, this system can provide a basis for further refinement that can be generalized to a variety of outbreak investigations.
积极追踪确诊病例的接触者对于台湾成功控制 COVID-19 的早期传播至关重要。随着大流行的持续，能够及时有效地进行流行病学调查，可以帮助减轻卫生人员的负担，并提高此类信息在决策中的有用性。为了开发一种新工具，我们决定开发一个电子疫情平台，该平台将新技术整合到数字平台和知识图谱中，以改善当前的流行病学调查实践。为了满足流行病学调查的各种需求，我们决定开发一个电子疫情平台，该平台提供半结构化、多方面、计算机辅助的疫情调查问卷。该平台有三个主要部分：（1）图形门户，使用户可以一目了然地了解平台提供的功能，然后选择他们需要的功能；（2）针对特定疾病的问卷，可以容纳不同格式的信息，包括文本输入、按钮选择和下拉菜单；（3）利用存储信息的功能，包括报告生成、统计分析和显示接触者追踪的知识图谱。当疫情调查数量增加时，知识图谱可以扩展到包含同一地点、同一时间出现的其他人员，即构成潜在的接触者集群。提取的信息还可以用于在地图上以动画形式显示追踪情况。总的来说，该系统可以为进一步的精细化提供基础，可推广应用于各种疫情调查。
