AEGIS - Influenza

Concept and Research

The AEGIS Influenza biosurveillance application shows a live, population-level view of regional influenza activity, comparing current spatial and temporal patterns of influenza spread with historical data. AEGIS Influenza was developed by The Intelligent Health Laboratory at the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP). It is used by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for influenza prevention and control activities across the Commonwealth.

AEGIS serves as a bridge between the clinical and public health environments. It provides public health officials with clinical data to inform public health decisions. It also provides clinicians with an epidemiological context to inform clinical decisions.

AEGIS Influenza is part of AEGIS (the Automated Epidemiological Geotemporal Integrated Surveillance System), an open source suite of population health monitoring tools.

Translational Impact

The AEGIS system monitors population-level data across all of Massachusetts. With this high-level view, scientists at CHIP were able to show that three and four year old children drive the spread of the annual influenza epidemic, incubating it in preschools and daycare centers before bringing it home to their families. Since three and four year olds contract influenza up to three weeks before the elderly begin to die of the flu, CHIP scientists suggested that they should targets for universal influenza vaccination.

In 2006, within four months of publishing this finding , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice extended the universal vaccine recommendation to include 3 and 4 year old children. In 2008, this recommendation was extended to include all children under 18.

About Us

The Children's Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP) is a multidisciplinary applied research and education program at Children's Hospital Boston. CHIP investigators work at the intersection of information science, healthcare and biomedical discovery, advancing the state-of-the-art in functional genomics, personalized medicine, biomedical research collaboration and public health.

Since 1995, CHIP researchers have worked to set the highest standards for patient autonomy and privacy. Our "Instrumenting the Healthcare Enterprise" initiatives focus on accelerating collaborative research across institutions, and on providing tools and services directly to patients, allowing them to be become more active, engaged participants in both their own healthcare and the broader research community.

The Intelligent Health Laboratory within CHIP studies the application of medical informatics, computer science, epidemiology, and biostatistics to improve public health and clinical practice.

Please see a detailed listing of our Research Projects and Publications.

Our public health informatics research focuses on biosurveillance and population health monitoring, influenza and infectious disease epidemiology, pharmacosurveillance, and geographical information systems (GIS). Our clinical informatics research focuses on personally controlled health records, clinical prediction and decision making, and advanced health communication infrastructures.

We also develop practical technologies deployed in real-world settings, including the AEGIS real-time surveillance system, HealthMap, and the IndivoHealth personally controlled electronic medical record.

Contact Us

aegis.chip "the at sign" gmail.com

Selected AEGIS-related Publications

Mandl KD, Overhage JM, Wagner MM, Lober WB, Sebastiani P, Mostashari F, Pavlin JA, Gesteland PH, Treadwell T, Koski E, Hutwagner L, Buckeridge DL, Aller RD, Grannis S. Implementing syndromic surveillance: a practical guide informed by the early experience. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2004 Mar-Apr;11(2):141-50.

Reis BY, Kirby C, Hadden LE, Olson K, McMurry AJ, Daniel JB, Mandl KD. AEGIS: a robust and scalable real-time public health surveillance system. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2007 Sep-Oct;14(5):581-8.

Brownstein JS, Kleinman KP, Mandl KD. Identifying pediatric age groups for influenza vaccination using a real-time regional surveillance system. Am J Epidemiol. 2005 Oct 1;162(7):686-93.

[ All Publications ]