Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health have created a free, publicly available database featuring 125 years' worth of weekly surveillance reports for reportable diseases in the U.S., with the goal of providing a resource for public health officials and others working to prevent outbreaks.
Partially funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, Project Tycho was inspired by recent resurgences of preventable diseases such as pertussis, measles or rubella. Named for the Dutch astronomer known for collecting the large amounts of astronomical data that enabled Johannes Kepler to formulate his laws of planetary motion, the big data project aims to enable research on patterns of infectious diseases and the effects of vaccines that will eventually result in public health policy to reduce the prevalence of avoidable outbreaks.
"Infectious disease research is critically dependent on reliable historical data to understand underlying epidemic dynamics. However, my colleagues and I repeatedly find ourselves digging out historical datasets from various sources in different states of preservation," said lead author Willem G. van Panhuis, MD, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology at Pitt Public Health, in a news release. "By digitizing and giving open access to the entire collection of U.S. notifiable disease data, we've made a bold move toward solving this problem."
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