War on dengue: Tackling financial cost of unplanned outbreak management

The disease-outbreak predicting application modelled by start-up company Artificial Intelligence in Medical Epidemiology (AIME) paves the way for better financial management in the event of unprecedented dengue outbreak.

AIME's main researcher and co-founder Dr Dhesi Baha Raja together with Prof Ting Choo and Dr Peter Ho from Singularity University's Graduate Studies Program engineered a machine learning model and application with the capability to predict dengue outbreak as early as three months prior to an epidemic which could help in managing the financial costs involved.

Dr Dhesi said, dengue creates a serious impact on countries' economies, with about US$440 million spent per country.

"When countries do not know where the next outbreak will happen, public health officials tend to spend valuable resources in management control techniques such as fogging, larviciding, genetically modified mosquitoes and health awareness campaigns," he said.

The application, which was developed after three years of research and tested in Malaysia (based on open data source), yielded results with an 88.62 percent accuracy level.

Arrangements are in progress for a pilot to be conducted in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

AIME's computer engineer and co-founder Rainier Mallol whose family had been affected numerous times by the mosquito-born disease in the Dominican Republic said, "The company (AIME) was formed in Singularity University's Graduate Studies Program and is now making the necessary arrangements to run a pilot in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

"We are ready to go. We've focused the last weeks on making the prediction platform fully operational."

Apart from combatting dengue, the prediction application could also alleviate the burden of financial cost which is faced by countries that are not prepared in terms of managing an outbreak.