Recently, the Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) released a white paper called Pandemic Informatics: Preparation, Robustness, and Resilience, by Elizabeth Bradley (University of Colorado Boulder), Madhav Marathe (University of Virginia), Melanie Moses (The University of New Mexico), William D Gropp (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Daniel Lopresti (Lehigh University). It is part of the series of white papers called Quadrennial Papers that explore areas and issues around computing research with potential to address national priorities.  The Pandemic Informatics paper outlines an effective strategy to reduce the national and global burden of pandemics. It includes (i) detect timing and location of occurrence, taking into account the many interdependent driving […]

The following is a guest blog post from Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member Katie Siek, Indiana University.  Automated, proximity-based contact tracing apps use Bluetooth to identify who is near them. In theory, this is a great solution that can be efficiently deployed widely (albeit with many privacy and protocol considerations addressed here), however the assumption is that people have access to mobile phones with Bluetooth and use technology similarly. We know that not everyone has access to smartphones. Pew notes that approximately 70% of Americans who make less than $30,000 a year own a smartphone. Similar stats are seen for Americans who live in rural areas and those with […]

What if we could link the Framingham Heart Study (NHLBI) with Alzheimer’s health data (NIH) to better understand the correlative effects in cardiovascular health with aging and dementia? What if journal articles could directly link to repository data sets and the software used for the analysis of those same data? The number of possible discoveries could increase. The proliferation of data, and the accompanying computing resources and new algorithms, brings new opportunities for discovery, as well as new challenges. This is especially important during our current health crisis. This is what the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is hoping to do through their Strategic Plan for Data Science – modernize […]

“Applying AI in real-world applications requires an understanding of operational realities and human workflows – especially in healthcare applications. My colleagues and I at Johns Hopkins APL are kicking off series of virtual events to look at this more closely, beginning on 4/21 with a focus on the use of AI technology to aid with the COVID-19 pandemic.”- Ashley Llorens, Chief of the Intelligent Systems Center at APL As a precursor to the 2020 National Health Symposium, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory is hosting a virtual event exploring Operationalizing AI in Health on April 21. Event: Operationalizing AI in Health Date: April 21, 2020 Time: 3:00pm ET – 4:30pm ET Location: […]

In two weeks you are hosting 1,800 scientists, engineers, designers, and other experts at a five day conference but then the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suddenly encourages Americans to practice “social distancing” measures to prevent the further spread of COVID-19. What do you do?  You move it online.  That is what the IEEE VR conference chairs decided to do last month, led by Blair MacIntyre, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing and IEEE VR conference co-chair, and Kyle Johnsen, an associate professor in the University of Georgia’s College of Engineering, when they transitioned the IEEE VR 2020 Conference to an all-virtual event. Working non-stop […]

Contributions to this post were provided by CCC Council members Katie Siek (Indiana University) and Shwetak Patel (University of Washington).  Many people around the country are in week three of their resolutions to monitoring their health with their fitness trackers. These mobile health devices are becoming more common. The iphone track your steps, maybe without you even realizing it, as does this necklace and this ring. Researchers have been talking about mobile health devices for years. The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) held 2016 workshop on Discovery and Innovation in Smart and Pervasive Health and then at AAAS 2017 CCC had a session on “Health in Your Pocket: Diagnosing and Treating […]