SBIR Phase I: BioPortal - An Informatics Infrastructure for Infectious Disease and Biosecurity Information Sharing, Analysis, and Visualization

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I proposal aims to create an information management system to monitor infectious disease outbreaks. The goal of this SBIR project is to build upon the ongoing BioPortal effort to develop an integrated infrastructure for infectious disease information collection, sharing, analysis, and visualization and to demonstrate its feasibility in real-world public health management settings. Deliverables include a scalable and flexible messaging module to facilitate real-world public health data collection and reporting, novel spatio-temporal data analysis techniques with visualization, an integrated, Web-based, one-stop information sharing and analysis environment, and a user study to assess commercial feasibility and technology adoption. The proposed work is expected to deliver a viable system architecture design and advanced data analysis functions to be part of the next-generation public health information infrastructure. The proposed informatics infrastructure will have a wide range of potential users including state and county epidemiologists, general public health workers, researchers and policy makers, physicians, triage nurses, livestock veterinaries, domestic animal veterinaries, plant disease researchers and practitioners, and law enforcement agencies monitoring and responding to biosecurity events, among others. We also plan to expand into other market segments including the private sector.