About PLOD

Currently, public health authorities (which collectively refer to organizations that manage public health in the national and local governments) use the standard format for patient and suspected cases published by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases as the format for describing information on infected persons.

However, there is no standard format for "patient movement" information, which can be expressed in a variety of ways. Currently, the information is collected through interviews through active epidemiological surveys, so it is expressed in free text in a table divided by days. Therefore, "patient movement" information is not expressed in a form that can be processed quantitatively, such as latitude and longitude. As a result, in order to conduct statistical analysis of patient movement and contact, it is necessary to "code" the information into some kind of nominal scale each time, and it is also difficult to conduct flexible analysis to elucidate the mode of infection.

The assessment of the risk of infection between patients and contacts is also left to human assessment using the behavioral and contact information described in the form. For example, among the strangers with whom the patient had contact during the period of infectivity, "an acquaintance with whom the patient had a prolonged conversation at close range without a mask" is considered high risk, while "a sales clerk with whom the patient had a very short contact at a short distance wearing a mask" is considered low risk. At public health centers, for example, this decision has been made manually by public health nurses.

Isn't it possible to automatically process the "movement" and "contact" of patients and contacts? Our research aims to establish a new methodology in public health and spatial epidemiology by computer processing of this very information. If such "knowledge processing technology" for infectious diseases can be realized, it will be possible to efficiently remove personal information from patient information collected by government agencies and semi-automate the process of creating press releases.

Such a technology does not exist and is an extremely challenging research topic. Public health experts and knowledge processing experts have collaborated to tackle this problem and have come up with a proposal for a standard format, PLOD, that can appropriately represent patient mobility information using standard "Semantic Web" technology. By describing patient movement information in this way, we aim to be able to "infer" contact between arbitrary patients and the possibility of infection. There is a lack of such technology in Europe and the United States, where the number of patients is exploding, and in Asian countries, where strong patient isolation policies are suppressing infections. As a powerful information technology for infectious disease control, Japan has the potential to lead the post-coronary world.

We are looking for contributors! If you can help, please contact us at the email address below.
plod_info [at] googlegroups.com