Infectious disease informatics

Tong, Joo Chuan; Ranganathan, Shoba

Throughout history, infectious diseases have posed a serious burden to mankind. More recently, there has been an alarming increase in drug-resistant microbes. Furthermore, new pathogens are emerging due to microbial evolution and adaptation. The spread of these diseases is a result of pathogen mutations and changes in human behavior patterns. Then, there are diseases that are lurking in the background, waiting for the right conditions before they strike again. In the war against these diseases, we have come to understand the behaviors of microbes in a heterogeneous world and the mechanisms governing disease transmission. These works have profoundly shaped modern knowledge of emerging and re-emerging infections. More recently, computational techniques have led the way into this new era by allowing rapid high-throughput analysis of pathogens which was previously not possible using traditional laboratory techniques. This chapter introduces methods in mathematical modeling, computational biology, and bioinformatics that have been used to study infectious diseases.