Strategies to Improve Detection of Novel Pandemic Pathogens: Cost Versus Detection Performance for Promising...

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Epidemiology
• Biosecurity

Background:

• Effective biosurveillance is crucial for early detection and response to emerging infectious disease threats.
• Pathogen-agnostic strategies offer a flexible approach to monitoring a wide range of potential outbreaks.
• Evaluating the cost-effectiveness and performance of different biosurveillance methods is essential for resource allocation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the cost and detection performance of three distinct pathogen-agnostic biosurveillance strategies: syndromic, wearable sensors, and environmental sampling.
• To model the effectiveness of these strategies under various disease transmission scenarios.
• To inform future investments in public health surveillance infrastructure.

Main Methods:

• Comparative analysis using computational modeling.
• Assessment of detection speed and cost-effectiveness for each strategy.
• Simulation of outbreak scenarios with varying disease characteristics (transmissibility, symptomatology).

Main Results:

• Environmental sampling demonstrated the fastest outbreak detection rates.
• Wearable sensors showed the second-fastest detection performance.
• The advantage of environmental and wearable strategies diminished with highly transmissible or symptomatic diseases.

Conclusions:

• Environmental sampling and wearable sensors show promise for rapid biosurveillance, particularly for less transmissible or asymptomatic pathogens.
• The optimal biosurveillance strategy is dependent on disease characteristics and requires careful consideration of trade-offs.
• Limited real-world pilot deployments are necessary to validate model predictions, refine cost estimates, and confirm early-warning performance.