Page 10 - Oxford_Martin_School_Brochure

GET AHEAD OF EPIDEMIC OUTBREAKS
Growing global trade, international air travel and environmental change mean that infectious disease can spread faster than ever before. At the same
time, radical advances in detection and analysis are valuable new weapons in the fight to prevent and control outbreaks. Bringing together rapid genome sequencing with digital data sets that describe human population density and movement in unprecedented detail, the Oxford Martin Programme on Pandemic Genomics is creating new techniques to predict
the spread of diseases. Its researchers hope such predictions will enable public health officials to target their resources efficiently and effectively, to stop epidemics in their tracks.
USE INTELLIGENT MACHINES TO MONITOR PATIENT RISK
Improved life expectancy brings with it new problems: a rise in chronic conditions such as diabetes, dementia and heart failure, with many patients suffering from multiple conditions at the same time. Our understanding of complex disease patterns and interactions is limited, but the advent of big data - and the ability to analyse it using new machine-learning techniques - offers unprecedented opportunities
for extending our knowledge and predicting risk. Combining expertise in healthcare, epidemiology, computer science and engineering, the Oxford Martin Programme on Deep Medicine is working on new methods for such analysis, to improve survival rates and reduce costly emergency admissions.
HOW DO WE PREDICT AND PRE
The recent rise in measles cases across Europe should be an alarm call for governments. Vaccines do not just protect us as individuals but also confer ‘herd immunity’, so that vulnerable groups who cannot be vaccinated are also protected. Our programme brings together insights from zoology, medicine, psychology, history and philosophy to investigate how we can increase a sense of collective moral responsibility, and bring about behavioural change at a societal scale.”
Professor Andrew Pollard
Lead Researcher on the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease
Professor of Paediatric Infection and Immunity and Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group
8