1. Tom Savel, MD Lead – Grid Technologies Medical Officer NCPHI, CDC
Fundamentals of a Public Health Grid: Demonstration of Grid Technologies
Tom Savel, MD
Lead – Grid Technologies
Medical Officer
NCPHI, CDC
2008 PHIN Conference
Session: A3
Monday, August 25, 2008
10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Room: International D

2. Overview Current State of Surveillance in PH Value of Federation
Demonstration of Distributed computing in action
Distributed Data
RODSA-DAI
Graphical User Interface to GRID
V Browser

3. Current State of Public Health Surveillance
Intensive data gathering from medical facilities, state & locals into a giant CDC owned data warehouse
Heavy use of statistical algorithms to detect anomalies in the data and trigger investigations
CDC Centric Approach to developing and deploying software
CDC
State, County, and Local Health Departments
Practitioners
Laboratories

4. Current State Challenges
Politics of control of data has been the primary obstacle to formation of a national system
Much existing data remains siloed at the Local/ State level – accessibility and visualization limited
Building systems non collaboratively leads to low adoption rates
Facility System
Medical Facilities
Local/State Health Dept
CDC
Syndromic Surveillance
BioSense
Integrator
BioSense AVR
Local/ State Data
BioSense Integrator
National Data Feeds Hospital, DoD, VA , etc
Clinical data
BioSense Data
Warehouse
Lab System
BioSense Integrator
Local/State Health Dept
Existing Capacity (RODS, ESSENCE, GIS,
etc)
Medical Facilities
Emphasize that this is all going one way
Local/ State Data
Various Integrator Technologies
Facility System

5. Future Goal: Federated Architecture
Leverage Existing Capacity
Distribute resources and infrastructure
Increase flexibility and scalability
Provide Local Control of data and services
Reduces political barriers
Address many privacy concerns
Foster Collaboration to define requirements, priorities, develop, and deploy technology
Local/State Health Dept
Surveillance & Informatics
Capacity
Local/ State Data
CDC &
Other Federal
Agencies
Users / Experts
National Data
Public Health Grid
Scientific and
Public Health Priorities
Standards, Services,
Guidance
Analysis / Visualization
Capacity
Important to note that all stakeholders particapate in ALL parts of the public health grid
Local/ State Data
Academic / Industry Partners

6. Value of Federation
Significant distribution of resources and infrastructure
Increased scalability
decreased costs
Increased leveraging of existing capacity
Local control of data and services
Reduces political barriers
Address many privacy concerns

7. Why Globus? What is Globus? Most Mature (late 90s)
Open Source, Lead for Grid Middleware
Most Mature (late 90s)
Federal Partners Use it
caBIG
Security - tested
Digital Certificates
SDN

8. Challenges in Biosurveillance
Distributed Data
Value of connecting disparate databases
Using common infrastructure
Very flexible for heterogeneity
Barriers
Costs to collect data
Current high level of effort
Goal of reduction
Through reusable components - SOA
Political

9. Why RODS? Availability of partnerships Currently in production
First of many planned
X-DAI (ESSENCE, etc.)
Demo using multiple databases and Google maps….
Leveraging RODSA-DAI work (re-using services for this demonstration)

10. RODSA-DAI What is it? Collaborators OGSA-DAI & RODS
RODS Client for OGSA-DAI Services
Integrate disparate RODS instances for time- and spatial- series analyses
Collaborators
Univ. Edinburgh
RODS team
NCPHI

11. Data at the Grid Node Metadata: Date of Admission Admission Diagnosis
Patient Age
Patient Gender
Patient Zip Code

12. Use Case Two separate hospitals Two separate databases
Overlap in geographic coverage
Need to get accurate picture of situation

13. The Process

14. Visualization of aggregate Counts by Zip Code Centroid

15. Visualization of aggregate Counts by Zip Code Centroid

16. Visualization of aggregate Counts by Zip Code Centroid

17. Visualization of aggregate Counts by Zip Code Centroid

18. Visualization of aggregate Counts by Zip Code Centroid

19. Visualization of aggregate Counts by Zip Code Centroid

20. Visualization of aggregate Counts by Zip Code Centroid

21. V Browser Single access point to “The Grid”
All tools on grid (seemingly) integrated into one “meta” or “virtual” computer
No need for extra software (only Java 1.5 needed)
Same look and feel for both windows and linux (but customizable)

22. V Browser Part of the VL-e Toolkit
Virtual Laboratory for e-Science Initiative
Netherlands
VL-e Toolkit (VLET) is intended as toolkit for grid users

23. V Browser Command Line vs. GUI Using grid infrastructure Demo
New way of leveraging existing open source tools
Runs on Globus
Uses Globus Security
3rd Party – Open Source (Netherlands)
Demo

32. Next Steps Next Portfolio of Research Extend V Browser
Globus and Health Information Exchanges
Security Evaluation
Grid / Grid integration
X-DAI - expansion

33. Thank You!
Questions?