Data Science and Ebola
This work addresses public health challenges during epidemics by applying data science, but it appears incremental as it describes existing methods on a specific case.
The paper discusses how data science transformed the handling of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa by organizing and analyzing large datasets to improve public health responses.
Data Science---Today, everybody and everything produces data. People produce large amounts of data in social networks and in commercial transactions. Medical, corporate, and government databases continue to grow. Sensors continue to get cheaper and are increasingly connected, creating an Internet of Things, and generating even more data. In every discipline, large, diverse, and rich data sets are emerging, from astrophysics, to the life sciences, to the behavioral sciences, to finance and commerce, to the humanities and to the arts. In every discipline people want to organize, analyze, optimize and understand their data to answer questions and to deepen insights. The science that is transforming this ocean of data into a sea of knowledge is called data science. This lecture will discuss how data science has changed the way in which one of the most visible challenges to public health is handled, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.