NOSOVE board meeting 28th May 2013

NOSOVE board meeting via Skype

28.05.2013; 13:00-13:39

Attending: Brian Lassen, Hanne Kongsted, Liza Rosenbaum Nielsen, Marit Stormoen, Outi Hälli, Arvo Viltrop

Apologies: Ann Lindberg; Aivars Berzins

Minutes (kept by Arvo):

1.       It was discussed, whether we should keep the NOSOVE website for one more year so that it could point to the NOSOVE blog. This would mean that we should pay a fee to the Univ. of Copenhagen for keeping the website.

It was decided to abandon the website and to keep the blog only from now on. As the internet search engines take you directly to the NOSOVE blog, there is no need for the website any more.

2.       On sponsoring the SVEPM 2014 meeting.

NOSOVE agrees to support the SVEPM annual meeting to be held in Dublin in March 2014 with 1000 euro.

When the program for the conference is ready, NOSOVE would like to specify an activity at the conference that the society will be advertised as sponsor of, e.g. a session or workshop with speakers from NOSOVE-countries or themes of special interest to the NOSOVE-countries (i.e. Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia).

3.       NOSOVE meeting and course 2014:

a.       Place and venue: Arvo and Brian (with the support from Outi) persuaded everyone that the meeting should be kept out of Tallinn. Arvo has suggested a little town with great history at west coast of Estonia called Haapsalu. It is located ~100 km from Tallinn, with very  good bus connections (1 hour 50 min drive). It was decided to go to Haapsalu. Arvo will start looking for the venue.

b.      Topic of the course: The poll in blog had serious technical problems, so it is not possibel to get any result out of it. So it was decided that the board members will  make personal inquiries during two following weeks among potential participants and try to figure out which of the two topics (Social network analysis or Sundromic surveillance) is prefered and would collect more participants. Decision will be made there after.

NOSOVE is looking for a new logo

NOSOVE has decided to update our logo. 

The need became apparent during the last GA where the point was raised that our current logo is not representing the Baltic States that have become present and active in the NOSOVE activites. 

We have already received one submission by Marie Nöremark that will be considered. 

We invite anyone interested to participate in illustrating a new logo for NOSOVE, please send it to brian.lassen[at]gmail.com. 

The competition will close 1st August 2013.
The submissions are considered highly appreciated but voluntary work.

All logo's will be listed in this post and we welcome comments from members on this blog post that we can take into account when making the final decision.

Submission by Maria Nöremark

Illustrators comments for logo: The basis of the logo is a compass with a needle pointing north, to represent the Nordic part of NOSOVE.  In the middle is a graph to represent epidemiology. The logo is made up of the letters of NOSOVE; the two Os are the ring of the compass, the N is north on the compass, the V (upside down) is both the compass arrow and part of the graph, the E is the x-axis of the graph, the S is a curve in the graph.

Search for risk modeller in Weybridge, UK

Do you want to put your mathematical modelling and/or quantitative risk assessment skills to good use? Are you interested in biological systems, animal health and food safety and would you find the challenge of these complex issues stimulating?
 If so, you could be part of a team that’s helping to judge the threat to animal and human health posed by everything from bovine TB to climate change.
 Defra is the UK government department responsible for policy and regulations on the environment, food and rural affairs. The department was established to protect the environment for future generations, make our economy more environmentally sustainable and improve our quality of life and well-being.
 In this key role, you will join DEFRA’s Animal Health & Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA). You’ll be part of AHVLA’s internationally recognised risk analysis workgroup that provides the UK government and EU with risk assessments that inform policies and contingency plans, as well as guidance on animal health and food safety.  As part of this team you will apply your quantitative skills to many high-profile topics such as bovine TB, avian influenza, vector-borne disease and antibiotic resistance. You will be involved in the entire risk assessment process, from defining the risk question and model design, to model implementation and the delivery of results.  Your efforts will help to shape future policies concerning animal health and food safety, while advancing the science of risk assessment. It is therefore essential that you have a degree in a subject with a significant mathematical or statistical component and also experience of applying quantitative risk assessment, mathematical modelling or simulation modelling, ideally in the field of biological systems, within a research environment.  If you have the expertise, communication skills and self-motivation we’re looking for, you could help the country to combat a wide range of possible threats.

Salary: £27,548 - £34,584.  Location: Weybridge, Surrey, UK.

To view a full job description visit www.civilservice.gov.uk/jobs/ and enter vacancy reference: 1299840. Alternatively contact us on 0845 603 7262 or email: ssd.applications@defra.gsi.gov.uk for a copy, quoting the reference.

Closing date: 21^st June 2013.

Emma L. Snary B.Sc. PhD.Risk Analysis Workgroup Leader Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA)Epidemiology, Surveillance and Risk GroupNew Haw,Addlestone,Surrey,KT15 3NB T: +44(0) 1932 357317GTN: 3956 2317F: +44(0) 1932 349983
E: emma.snary@ahvla.gsi.gov.uk www.defra.gov.uk/ahvla Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) This email and any attachments is intended for the named recipient only. If you have received it in error you have no authority to use, disclose, store or copy any of its contents and you should destroy it and inform the sender. Whilst this email and associated attachments will have been checked for known viruses whilst within AHVLA systems we can accept no responsibility once it has left our systems. Communications on AHVLA computer systems may be monitored and/or recorded to secure the effective operation of the system and for other lawful purposes.

Master level course in Disease Control and Dynamics - in a One Health setting 2013 at University of Copenhagen

Dear colleagues,

we offer a course in Disease Control and Dynamics - in a One Health setting at master level at Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen starting August 19, 2013.

The course consists of three parts
Part 1 is a distance learning part that takes place between August 19th and 23rd. It mainly involves reading up on principles and concepts of diagnostic test evaluation and prevalence estimation and finalizes with an online test.

Part 2 takes place at Frederiksberg Campus, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences as a 5 day period from August 26th to 30th 2013. It is planned as a series of lectures with interspersed group and individual exercises and assignments. Relevant literature will be supplied or suggested before and during the course.

Part 3 is conducted electronically during a 5 week long period from September 2nd to October 10th 2013 as distance learning. Activities that will be assessed include weekly short assignments, participation in discussion forums and a final 24 hour examination. The time needed to participate in this part of the course is estimated at 2 hours per day, on average.

During the course we will be working with basic methods to map and investigate spatiotemporal patterns of disease and model dynamics of infections in human and animal populations.

Find a pdf-flyer with a full description of the course by clicking this link.

If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact me:
Liza Rosenbaum Nielsen
Course coordinator
liza@sund.ku.dk

NOSOVE General Assembly minutes, 2013

Tuesday 15th of 2013, Copenhagen, Denmark

Election of chairman of the AGM: Maria Nöremark

Election of secretary: Liza Rosenbaum Nielsen

Election of keeper of minutes:  Liza Rosenbaum Nielsen

The chairman of NOSOVE, Maria Nöremark, gave a report of the time since the last NOSOVE meeting in 2010:

The report covered the period since the latest election (i.e. since last meeting 2010).
Chairman: Maria Nöremark (Statens Veterinärmedicinska Anstalt, Sweden) Treasurer: Ann Lindberg (Statens Veterinärmedicinska Anstalt, Sweden)
Member: Marit Stormoen (Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, Norway) Member: Outi Hälli (University of Helsinki, Finland) Member: Brian Lassen (Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonia) Substitute: Britt Bang Jensen (National Veterinary Institute, Norway) Substitute: Liza Rosenbaum Nielsen (KU LIFE, Denmark) Auditor: Marianne Sandberg (Landbrug & Fødevarer, Denmark) Auditor: Trude Lyngstadt (National Veterinary Institute, Norway) Substitute for auditors: Nina Otten (KU LIFE, Denmark)


The board has had four meetings (teleconferences) discussing the outcome of the survey and planning the 2013 meeting. The format of the 2013, including a workshop for discussion on education within veterinary epidemiology is a result of the wishes expressed by the members through the survey. To provide a background for the workshop the board has also done a survey among PhD-students in Veterinary Epidemiology to ask them; where and how they find information about PhD-courses in Veterinary Epidemiology, hinders to participate in such courses, needs for courses, advantages and disadvantages with e-learning vs. meeting in person and if there are courses that they have been extra satisfied with. The results were presented at the 2013 meeting.  Work has been done with the NOSOVE webpage/blogspot (thank you, Brian) and discussions are ongoing on how the page can be further improved, e.g. if it could be used for spreading information on upcoming courses or for suggesting topics for future courses.’

The board has had four meetings (teleconferences) discussing the outcome of the survey and planning the 2013 meeting. The format of the 2013, including a workshop for discussion on education within veterinary epidemiology is a result of the wishes expressed by the members through the survey. To provide a background for the workshop the board has also done a survey among PhD-students in Veterinary Epidemiology to ask them; where and how they find information about PhD-courses in Veterinary Epidemiology, hinders to participate in such courses, needs for courses, advantages and disadvantages with e-learning vs. meeting in person and if there are courses that they have been extra satisfied with. The results were presented at the 2013 meeting.  Work has been done with the NOSOVE webpage/blogspot (thank you, Brian) and discussions are ongoing on how the page can be further improved, e.g. if it could be used for spreading information on upcoming courses or for suggesting topics for future courses.’

Good financial situation in NOSOVE (current balance 112.686 SEK). Main expenses over the last couple of years have been sponsorships for SVEPM and ISVEE. Auditors recommended that the treasurer’s report could be approved. It was decided to introduce a routine where NOSOVE meeting budgets are approved by the board prior to committing to cover any deficits.

Discussion on the practice of supporting significant scientific meetings or participation in meetings followed. We do not have a lot of money for people to apply for all sorts of things, but will decide from time to time when requests come in. A few bursaries may be offered to participate in NOSOVE-meetings/courses in the future.

The following board was elected for the next period: For 1 year: Chairman: Arvo Viltrop (ES). Ordinary members: Marit Stormoen (N), Liza Rosenbaum Nielsen (DK), Aivars Berzins (LV) For 2 years: Treasurer Ann Lindberg (SE). Ordinary members: Brian Lassen (ES), Outi Hälli (F)

NOSOVE website:  We discussed whether we should have “a real website” with a ‘.org’ address rather than a dk-address. It was decided to keep NOSOVE.org and make it point to the blogspot, and there was general agreement that the blogspot works well. The blogspot works with different endings (nosove.blogspot.dk, nosove.blogspot.fi, nosove.blogspot.no, .com, etc.)

Lis Alban will find the statutes and Jens Frederik Agger will find a short description of the history of NOSOVE and a list of course to upload on the blogspot. If others have other documents of relevance, they can send it to the board to upload on the blogspot.

A meeting was planned in Iceland in 2011, but was cancelled due to few participants. (For the future it is important to remember to advertise the courses well enough).

Due to the cancelled meeting, in 2011 a survey was done among NOSOVE members concerning the future of NOSOVE; if NOSOVE should continue and if so in what way. The survey also asked for topics that could be of interest for future courses if it was decided to continue with NOSOVE. There was a support for continuing NOSOVE. The latest board was also elected through this survey since there was no meeting in 2011:

Treasurer Ann Lindberg’s report

The account was settled and the administration during the last election period approved (since the last meeting 2010).

Election of the new board members.

Election of substitutes for the board (1 year): Hanne Kongstad (DK) and Britt Bang Jensen (N)

Election of auditors: Marcus Doherr (CH) and Jenny Frössling (SE)

Determination of membership fee for the coming year to be zero

Any other business:  

Historical documents of NOSOVE:

A suggestion was made that the board makes a new-NOSOVO-logo to include all countries

Closing of the meeting

Syndromic Surveillance – monitoring animal health data to detect temporal aberrations in near real-time using free software

 [Proposal for next NOSOVE course in June 2014, please vote in the poll] 

Teacher: Dorea Fernanda

Syndromic surveillance can be characterised as a process involving the continuous analysis of health data to provide immediate feedback.

The increasing amount of health data recording in electronic format presents extra challenges for data analysis, but also new opportunities to extract information from data in real and near-real time. In this course participants will have a chance to learn, through several hands-on exercises, how to use freely available software to set up automated, autonomous routines of data analysis.

The theory and exercises will cover all the basic steps to successfully develop, evaluate and implement a syndromic surveillance system capable of detecting temporal aberrations (which may indicate the occurrence of outbreaks) when monitoring cases load from a given animal health data source, such as laboratory submissions, clinical cases, etc. These steps can be summarized as:

• basic text mining methods for automated classification of records into syndromes;
• retrospective evaluation of data to create baseline profiles following the removal of excessive noise and aberrations, and the identification of temporal effects;
• prospective evaluation of detection algorithms; and finally
• real-time monitoring and implementation.

As all software used are freely available, participants will be able to readily apply the skills learned into their work or research.

Course specifications

Participants are expected to have a basic knowledge of biostatistics. No previous knowledge of the software to be used is expected.

The course exercises will use the statistical programming environment R, and  RapidMiner, the world-leading open-source system for data mining available freely from Rapid-I (http://rapid-i.com/content/view/26/84/). Participants will receive download and installation instructions upon registration, and they should bring their own laptop computer. Datasets will be provided as part of the course, but participants are welcome to bring a dataset of their own to explore some of the techniques learned.

Workshop Content

Day 1 – Introduction to the tools:  Basics of using R and Rapid Miner.

Day2 – Syndromic surveillance, Step 1: Automated classification of records into syndromes. Participants will learn the basics of text-mining and will practice implementing supervised (rule-based) and unsupervised (naïve Bayes, Decision Trees) machine learning methods in order to create automated routines to classify records into syndromes.

Day3 – Syndromic surveillance, Step 2: Retrospective evaluation of data available. Basic concepts of time series analysis will be covered. Participants will practice on a dataset in order to learn how to identify statistical characteristics of the time series which can impact aberration detection, in special temporal effects such as day of week and seasonal patterns. Step 3: Prospective evaluation of data. Participants will practice the use of basic temporal aberration detection algorithms, such as control charts (cumulative sums, Shewhart type control charts and Exponentially Weighted Moving Average). More advanced methods (such as Holt-Winters exponential smoothing and removal of temporal effects using regression models) will then be employed to deal with specific characteristics that can be found when monitoring different data sources.

Day4 – Syndromic surveillance, Step 4: Implementation. Participants will learn how to combine tools (Rapid Miner and R) in order to implement a syndromic surveillance system, from data acquisition to final reports.

 

Network Analysis Workshop

 [Proposal for next NOSOVE course in June 2014, please vote in the poll] 

Rob Christley

Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology

Head of Epidemiology & Public Health

School of Veterinary Science

University of Liverpool,

UK

Provisional Outline

The course will introduce the terminology, methods and some of the software available to analyse networks. The workshop will be a combination of short lectures, discussions and hands-on analysis (half of each day will be spent completing exercises designed to give participants practical experience of network analysis). By the end of the workshop participants will be able to design and undertake studies appropriate for the collection of network data, and use such data to create network images, describe important features of the network and identify important individuals and subgroups within the network. In addition, we will cover aspects of the statistical analysis of network data and the impact of networks on infectious disease dynamics..

Data will be provided for the practical sessions; however, participants will be encouraged to bring their own data to work on during the workshop. In addition, participants are encouraged to discuss their ideas for network analysis with the group.

The course outline below provides the basic course structure and topics to be covered. This may be subject to some modification.

DAY 1

a.m.	Theory	INTRODUCTION Overview of the course What is network analysis? -   What is a network? -   The network paradigm -   History Applications of network analysis -   Veterinary -   Other applications Network topology; types and properties of networks Books, references, and other useful information!
p.m.	Practical	FROM DATA TO ILLUSTRATION Introduction to data sets Introduction to the software Data entry Viewing and editing data Data manipulation Importing attribute data Visualising a network Saving NetDraw files

DAY 2

a.m.	Theory	FROM ILLUSTRATION TO ANALYSIS §   Analysis of individual nodes -    Centrality §   Analysis of a network -    Cohesion §   Analysis of groups and regions -    Components, cohesive sub-groups -    Structural & regular equivalence, blockmodelling
p.m.	Practical	FROM ILLUSTRATION TO ANALYSIS §   Analysis of individual nodes §   Analysis of networks §   Analysis of sub-groups

DAY 3

a.m.	Theory	FURTHER TOPICS IN NETWORK ANALYSIS §   Network data collection §   Networks and disease dynamics §   Discussion session -    Presentation of research ideas or data by the participants (if they choose)
p.m.	Practical	FURTHER TOPICS IN NETWORK ANALYSIS §   Brief overview of other network software §   Statistical analysis of network data §   Continue working on exercises from day 1 and 2 §   Work on your own data

Requirements:

·      Course material with notes, practicals and solutions to the exercises will be provided during the first session of the workshop.

·      Participants will be required to bring their own laptop.

·      Software required: UCINET. A free trial version will be provided for the course.