Researchers create web tool for navigating disease control measures

Researchers based at Georgetown University Medical Center recently developed an online tool to enter a mix of local conditions and political constraints in their region to determine how control measures have been integrated.

The app, which was made possible by support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was described in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. It focuses on the tropical disease schistosomiasis and malaria.

“This disease combination is particularly interesting,” Claire Standley, an assistant research professor with Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science and Security, said. “We know that having schistosomiasis increases the risk of severe malaria. So if, for example, public health officials are in a community handing out bed nets, it could make sense to also treat for schistosomiasis because of the down-the-road benefit of reducing the risk of malaria.”

Both diseases are endemic throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, along with locations in South America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. In both cases, it is also children who bear the brunt of the effects.

“The information to support this dual effort is available in academic journals, but translating the information into a usable and practical format available to the right people at the right time is key to changing the way co-endemic diseases are controlled,” Standley said.

The researchers also intend to add financial and resource allocation data to the app’s considerations further down the line. This would give users the ability to weigh cost-effectiveness and similar information that comes with integrating disease control. Standley says putting such information in the hands of those public health officials on the ground could significantly increase disease control efforts.