Modelling Healthcare Associated Infections with Hypergraphs

Vivek Anand, B. Aditya Prakash

Keywords: Hypergraphs, Healthcare Associated Infections, Agent Based Models, MRSA

TL;DR: We show that Hypergraphs can model Healthcare Associated Infections better than graphs can

Abstract:

Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs) like MRSA are a major threat to our hospitals and public health systems that significantly
affect lives and resources. Unlike many common transmissible diseases, HAIs spread not only via direct person to person contacts but also indirectly through infected surfaces. Consequently, many of the standard epidemiological models like SIS, SEIR etc. cannot be used here. As a result, recently, many 2 Mode models were developed where people and surfaces behave differently allowing the pathogen to spread both via people and surfaces. However, these 2-Mode models are linear and cannot model non-linear contagions and group interactions effectively. In this paper, we present an agent based 2-Mode Hypergraph based Model and show that it is more expressive than the graph based benchmark both theoretically and experimentally.