scholarly journals Optimal resource allocation in HIV self-testing secondary distribution among Chinese MSM: data-driven integer programming models

Author(s):  
Fengshi Jing ◽  
Qingpeng Zhang ◽  
Jason J. Ong ◽  
Yewei Xie ◽  
Yuxin Ni ◽  
...  

Human immunodeficiency virus self-testing (HIVST) is an innovative and effective strategy important to the expansion of HIV testing coverage. Several innovative implementations of HIVST have been developed and piloted among some HIV high-risk populations like men who have sex with men (MSM) to meet the global testing target. One innovative strategy is the secondary distribution of HIVST, in which individuals (defined as indexes) were given multiple testing kits for both self-use (i.e.self-testing) and distribution to other people in their MSM social network (defined as alters). Studies about secondary HIVST distribution have mainly concentrated on developing new intervention approaches to further increase the effectiveness of this relatively new strategy from the perspective of traditional public health discipline. There are many points of HIVST secondary distribution in which mathematical modelling can play an important role. In this study, we considered secondary HIVST kits distribution in a resource-constrained situation and proposed two data-driven integer linear programming models to maximize the overall economic benefits of secondary HIVST kits distribution based on our present implementation data from Chinese MSM. The objective function took expansion of normal alters and detection of positive and newly-tested ‘alters’ into account. Based on solutions from solvers, we developed greedy algorithms to find final solutions for our linear programming models. Results showed that our proposed data-driven approach could improve the total health economic benefit of HIVST secondary distribution. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Data science approaches to infectious disease surveillance’.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 3110
Author(s):  
Karina Gibert ◽  
Xavier Angerri

In this paper, the results of the project INSESS-COVID19 are presented, as part of a special call owing to help in the COVID19 crisis in Catalonia. The technological infrastructure and methodology developed in this project allows the quick screening of a territory for a quick a reliable diagnosis in front of an unexpected situation by providing relevant decisional information to support informed decision-making and strategy and policy design. One of the challenges of the project was to extract valuable information from direct participatory processes where specific target profiles of citizens are consulted and to distribute the participation along the whole territory. Having a lot of variables with a moderate number of citizens involved (in this case about 1000) implies the risk of violating statistical secrecy when multivariate relationships are analyzed, thus putting in risk the anonymity of the participants as well as their safety when vulnerable populations are involved, as is the case of INSESS-COVID19. In this paper, the entire data-driven methodology developed in the project is presented and the dealing of the small subgroups of population for statistical secrecy preserving described. The methodology is reusable with any other underlying questionnaire as the data science and reporting parts are totally automatized.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 503-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei-Che Hsu ◽  
Jay M. Rosenberger ◽  
Neelesh V. Sule ◽  
Melanie L. Sattler ◽  
Victoria C. P. Chen

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 232-240
Author(s):  
Alexander V. Khorkov ◽  
Shamil I. Galiev

Abstract A numerical method for investigating k-coverings of a convex bounded set with circles of two given radii is proposed. Cases with constraints on the distances between the covering circle centers are considered. An algorithm for finding an approximate number of such circles and the arrangement of their centers is described. For certain specific cases, approximate lower bounds of the density of the k-covering of the given domain are found. We use either 0–1 linear programming or general integer linear programming models. Numerical results demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed methods are presented.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
MUTHU RAM ELENCHEZHIAN ◽  
VAMSEE VADLAMUDI ◽  
RASSEL RAIHAN ◽  
KENNETH REIFSNIDER

Our community has a widespread knowledge on the damage tolerance and durability of the composites, developed over the past few decades by various experimental and computational efforts. Several methods have been used to understand the damage behavior and henceforth predict the material states such as residual strength (damage tolerance) and life (durability) of these material systems. Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and Broadband Dielectric Spectroscopy (BbDS) are such methods, which have been proven to identify the damage states in composites. Our previous work using BbDS method has proven to serve as precursor to identify the damage levels, indicating the beginning of end of life of the material. As a change in the material state variable is triggered by damage development, the rate of change of these states indicates the rate of damage interaction and can effectively predict impending failure. The Data-Driven Discovery of Models (D3M) [1] aims to develop model discovery systems, enabling users with domain knowledge but no data science background to create empirical models of real, complex processes. These D3M methods have been developed severely over the years in various applications and their implementation on real-time prediction for complex parameters such as material states in composites need to be trusted based on physics and domain knowledge. In this research work, we propose the use of data-driven methods combined with BbDS and progressive damage analysis to identify and hence predict material states in composites, subjected to fatigue loads.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document