Traditional study of infectious diseases is based on pure simulation, patient interviews, or mathematical models. Since these techniques are not founded on real social interaction data, they are usually error-prone. To mitigate the above challenge, the PIs propose Mobidemics, a mobile phone-based gaming system that aims to change the way epidemiologists study the transmission of communicable diseases. Mobidemics provides a live interactive social gaming platform based on physical location and is tuned to the spread of infectious diseases. Working with computational epidemiologists, the team has identified a set of variables that can be used to describe infectious/contagious diseases. For instance, the distance at which a patient is infectious depends on the disease class and can be modeled in the virtual (gaming) world as a distance constraint at which a player can infect or shoot each other. Similarly, other changes to the game variable set can be made on the fly using the Mobidemics backend to provide an unprecedented control over a disease spread study and to model real life events and possibilities. The gaming frontend provides the necessary incentive to users to share their location and social interaction data. Mobidemics is a unique platform for collecting location data, social interaction data, and infection spread data. It provides the flexibility to tune the strategy based on the disease class being studied. The key components of infection spread, such as immunity to a disease (which is a function of age, build, and gender) is modeled as simple semantics. Hence, realistic real-time emulations of spread of infectious diseases can be performed using Mobidemics.
Infectious diseases such as the H1N1 flu accounts for thousands of human casualties every year. With better understanding of how infections spread in a social network, remedial action can be taken to contain them. Mobidemics provides a platform for understanding disease spread as well as collecting and analyzing disease spread data through a real time mobile phone based game. Hence, Mobidemics can have a large societal impact. The data collected and the services provided would also be useful to broader group of epidemiologists, companies, and municipalities interested in social interaction data.
This work resulted in the creation of a small business and the training of a professor and two undergraduate students in entrepreneurship. The project also resulted in deeper ties between faculty and students in the University of Arkansas CSCE department and the local entrepreneurial community. The focus of the work was to get faculty and students out of the lab and interacting with the end users/consumers of their research work and was done in conjunction with a mentor with industrial experience in their area. Energy management is an area of emerging standards which any new product or service must successfully navigate or risk facing huge challenges that could have been avoided during the research and development phases. Throughout the course of this project discussions were held with over 100 potential customers, 18 domain experts and 5 regulatory agencies at the state and national level. These perspectives allowed the team to design a product that has an opportunity fit into the existing infrastructure and build upon the trends of home automation and personalized energy management. The conversations also provided a framework for a minimal viable product for early adopters which will reduce the amount of additional research needed. A potentially larger impact was achieved in the thought process of the primary investigator and the students involved in the project. The exposure to an entrepreneurial mindset has modified the way new research is being conducted which could lead to additional commercial opportunities in the future. The two students expressed a desire to become entrepreneurs and have the fundamental understanding of how they would approach these opportunities.
