GOVERNMENT

A supercomputer at RTI International is running an $18.8 million "war game" designed to help world health officials battle the next major flu pandemic or bioterror attack. The new infectious disease modeling system involves about a dozen researchers at Research Triangle Institute crunching data supplied by a consortium of academic scientists for the next five years. Called MIDAS, for Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study, the program is a broad-based program to help policymakers make decisions in case of a disease outbreak or attack, officials said. The initial experiment is to simulate possible public health responses to a fictitious outbreak of avian flu in a simulated Southeast Asian community of 500,000 residents. Jamie Cuticchia, RTI's director of bioinformatics, said the computer modeling system was similar to those now being used by weather forecasters to predict hurricane movements and intensities. "The whole concept here is to see if we can create similar forms of accurate predictions for disease outbreaks," he said. "If an event occurs, what are the likely outcomes, given different variables? So for flu, for instance, we want to know what happens if we make vaccine available to everybody, or only to those over 65, things like that." The accuracy of the predictions spit out by the high-performance computer will depend on the success of the modelers in constructing the data, says Cuticchia. Programmers are using data on how people comply with instructions to take vaccines, the effectiveness of vaccines and anti-virals and how likely people are to stay home if they become ill. The project is funded by the National Institutes of Health. Information from: Associated Press