For Publishers
DiscoveryMetadataPeer reviewHostingPublishing
For Researchers
JoinPublishReviewCollect
Register
Blog
About
Search
Advanced search
My ScienceOpen
Search
For Publishers
For Researchers
Blog
About
10
views
16
references
 Top references
cited by
13
    
0 reviews
 Review
0
comments
 Comment
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      129
      similar
       All similar
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Contact tracing with a real-time location system: A case study of increasing relative effectiveness in an emergency department

      research-article

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPMC
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Highlights

          • •

            Contact tracing is an essential step in infectious disease control and prevention.

          • •

            Using Electronic medical record (EMR) is challenging and misses a number of potential exposures.

          • •

            Real time location system (RTLS) doubled the potential exposures list for pertussis disease beyond the conventional method of EMR-based contact identification

          • •

            RTLS is more efficient and timely in the process of contact tracing.

          • •

            Further studies with larger sample size are needed to confirm the findings.

          Abstract

          Background

          Contact tracing is the systematic method of identifying individuals potentially exposed to infectious diseases. Electronic medical record (EMR) use for contact tracing is time-consuming and may miss exposed individuals. Real-time location systems (RTLSs) may improve contact identification. Therefore, the relative effectiveness of these 2 contact tracing methodologies were evaluated.

          Methods

          During a pertussis outbreak in the United States, a retrospective case study was conducted between June 14 and August 31, 2016, to identify the contacts of confirmed pertussis cases, using EMR and RTLS data in the emergency department of a tertiary care medical center. Descriptive statistics and a paired t test (α = 0.05) were performed to compare contacts identified by EMR versus RTLS, as was correlation between pertussis patient length of stay and the number of potential contacts.

          Results

          Nine cases of pertussis presented to the emergency department during the identified time period. RTLS doubled the potential exposure list ( P < .01). Length of stay had significant positive correlation with contacts identified by RTLS (ρ = 0.79; P = .01) but not with EMR (ρ = 0.43; P = .25).

          Conclusions

          RTLS doubled the potential pertussis exposures beyond EMR-based contact identification. Thus, RTLS may be a valuable addition to the practice of contact tracing and infectious disease monitoring.

          Related collections

          Most cited references16

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: found
          Is Open Access

          Dynamics of Person-to-Person Interactions from Distributed RFID Sensor Networks

          Ciro Cattuto, Wouter Van den Broeck, Alain Barrat … (2010)
          Background Digital networks, mobile devices, and the possibility of mining the ever-increasing amount of digital traces that we leave behind in our daily activities are changing the way we can approach the study of human and social interactions. Large-scale datasets, however, are mostly available for collective and statistical behaviors, at coarse granularities, while high-resolution data on person-to-person interactions are generally limited to relatively small groups of individuals. Here we present a scalable experimental framework for gathering real-time data resolving face-to-face social interactions with tunable spatial and temporal granularities. Methods and Findings We use active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) devices that assess mutual proximity in a distributed fashion by exchanging low-power radio packets. We analyze the dynamics of person-to-person interaction networks obtained in three high-resolution experiments carried out at different orders of magnitude in community size. The data sets exhibit common statistical properties and lack of a characteristic time scale from 20 seconds to several hours. The association between the number of connections and their duration shows an interesting super-linear behavior, which indicates the possibility of defining super-connectors both in the number and intensity of connections. Conclusions Taking advantage of scalability and resolution, this experimental framework allows the monitoring of social interactions, uncovering similarities in the way individuals interact in different contexts, and identifying patterns of super-connector behavior in the community. These results could impact our understanding of all phenomena driven by face-to-face interactions, such as the spreading of transmissible infectious diseases and information.
          Article 0 comments Cited 308 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: found
            Is Open Access

            High-Resolution Measurements of Face-to-Face Contact Patterns in a Primary School

            Juliette Stehlé, Nicolas Voirin, Alain Barrat … (2011)
            Background Little quantitative information is available on the mixing patterns of children in school environments. Describing and understanding contacts between children at school would help quantify the transmission opportunities of respiratory infections and identify situations within schools where the risk of transmission is higher. We report on measurements carried out in a French school (6–12 years children), where we collected data on the time-resolved face-to-face proximity of children and teachers using a proximity-sensing infrastructure based on radio frequency identification devices. Methods and Findings Data on face-to-face interactions were collected on Thursday, October 1st and Friday, October 2nd 2009. We recorded 77,602 contact events between 242 individuals (232 children and 10 teachers). In this setting, each child has on average 323 contacts per day with 47 other children, leading to an average daily interaction time of 176 minutes. Most contacts are brief, but long contacts are also observed. Contacts occur mostly within each class, and each child spends on average three times more time in contact with classmates than with children of other classes. We describe the temporal evolution of the contact network and the trajectories followed by the children in the school, which constrain the contact patterns. We determine an exposure matrix aimed at informing mathematical models. This matrix exhibits a class and age structure which is very different from the homogeneous mixing hypothesis. Conclusions We report on important properties of the contact patterns between school children that are relevant for modeling the propagation of diseases and for evaluating control measures. We discuss public health implications related to the management of schools in case of epidemics and pandemics. Our results can help define a prioritization of control measures based on preventive measures, case isolation, classes and school closures, that could reduce the disruption to education during epidemics.
            Article 0 comments Cited 282 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: found
              Is Open Access

              Close Encounters in a Pediatric Ward: Measuring Face-to-Face Proximity and Mixing Patterns with Wearable Sensors

              Lorenzo Isella, Mariateresa Romano, Alain Barrat … (2011)
              Background Nosocomial infections place a substantial burden on health care systems and represent one of the major issues in current public health, requiring notable efforts for its prevention. Understanding the dynamics of infection transmission in a hospital setting is essential for tailoring interventions and predicting the spread among individuals. Mathematical models need to be informed with accurate data on contacts among individuals. Methods and Findings We used wearable active Radio-Frequency Identification Devices (RFID) to detect face-to-face contacts among individuals with a spatial resolution of about 1.5 meters, and a time resolution of 20 seconds. The study was conducted in a general pediatrics hospital ward, during a one-week period, and included 119 participants, with 51 health care workers, 37 patients, and 31 caregivers. Nearly 16,000 contacts were recorded during the study period, with a median of approximately 20 contacts per participants per day. Overall, 25% of the contacts involved a ward assistant, 23% a nurse, 22% a patient, 22% a caregiver, and 8% a physician. The majority of contacts were of brief duration, but long and frequent contacts especially between patients and caregivers were also found. In the setting under study, caregivers do not represent a significant potential for infection spread to a large number of individuals, as their interactions mainly involve the corresponding patient. Nurses would deserve priority in prevention strategies due to their central role in the potential propagation paths of infections. Conclusions Our study shows the feasibility of accurate and reproducible measures of the pattern of contacts in a hospital setting. The obtained results are particularly useful for the study of the spread of respiratory infections, for monitoring critical patterns, and for setting up tailored prevention strategies. Proximity-sensing technology should be considered as a valuable tool for measuring such patterns and evaluating nosocomial prevention strategies in specific settings.
              Article 0 comments Cited 102 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
                Bookmark
                All references

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                M. Susan Hallbeck
                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): Am J Infect Control
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Am J Infect Control
                Title: American Journal of Infection Control
                Publisher: Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc.
                ISSN (Print): 0196-6553
                ISSN (Electronic): 1527-3296
                Publication date PMC-release: 28 September 2017
                Publication date (Print): 1 December 2017
                Publication date (Electronic): 28 September 2017
                Volume: 45
                Issue: 12
                Pages: 1308-1311
                Affiliations
                [a ]Department of Emergency Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
                [b ]Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
                [c ]Department of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
                [d ]Departments of Surgery and Critical Care Systems, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
                Author notes
                [* ]Address correspondence to M. Susan Hallbeck, PhD, CPE, PE, Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery, Mayo Clinic, Division of Health Care Policy and Research, Department of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic, 200 First St SW, Rochester, MN 55905. (M.S. Hallbeck). hallbeck.susan@ 123456mayo.edu
                Article
                Publisher ID: S0196-6553(17)30961-6
                DOI: 10.1016/j.ajic.2017.08.014
                PMC ID: 7115342
                PubMed ID: 28967513
                SO-VID: 5b95b52a-f947-4586-8fa6-987c968b47d8
                Copyright © © 2017 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
                License:

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

                History
                Categories
                Subject: Article

                Keywords: infectious disease,pertussis
                Data availability:
                Keywords: infectious disease, pertussis

                Comments

                Comment on this article

                scite_

                Similar content129

                See all similar

                Cited by12

                See all cited by

                Most referenced authors293

                See all reference authors