Influenza Hospitalization Forecasting
Summary
In the infectious disease group here at Predictive Science, we run simulations to predict influenza burden on a week-to-week basis in the United States. Here the overall burden of infuenza is measured using influenza hospital admissions. Thus our model seeks to forecast new hospital admissions for future weeks.
Model
We use a Suseptible-Infectious-Recovered/Hospitalized (SIRH) model with a time-dependent reproduction number R0(t). Reproduction number can be understood as a measure of infectiousness.
Optimization
Fitting the model to daily data is done via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) process. This procedure maps the probability distribution, revealing not only the best fit, but also likely model variations.
Forecasting
The posterior distribution of the fit is used to make state-specific probabilistic forecasts of the daily number of confirmed influenza hospital admissions. The national forecast is constructed as the ordered sum of the state level forecasts. States with low hospitalization rates are not fitted and are forecasted with a simple statistical model. We also use a statistical model when we believe that there is large uncertainty in future trends. The daily data and forecasts are aggregated to the weekly scale.
User Selections
Epidemic Week: Week of the year as defined by the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). In this setting 'epidemic week' selects the portion of the flu season to fit the model to.
Data
Hospital Admission Data: The 'gold standard' for our forecasts is confirmed influenza admission data (field name: `previous_day_admission_influenza_confirmed`) from the COVID-19 Reported Patient Impact and Hospital Capacity by State Timeseries . This daily timeseries is provided by The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The data updates regularly and currently its reporting is mandatory. Here the daily forecasts and data are aggregated to the weekly scale.
Acknowledgment
Our work is supported by the CDC/CSTE (Award No.: 5 NU38OT000297) as part of a CDC coordinated Collaborative Forecasting Challenge for Weekly Confirmed Influenza Admissions During the 2021-2022 season.
For questions about this web site please contact:
Dr. M. Ben-Nun: mbennun@predsci.com
Dr. James Turtle: jturtle@predsci.com
Dr. Pete Riley: pete@predsci.com
Predictive Science Inc.
9990 Mesa Rim Rd, Suite 170
San Diego, CA 92121
Phone: (858) 450-6494
9990 Mesa Rim Rd, Suite 170
San Diego, CA 92121
Phone: (858) 450-6494