Statistical outbreak detection by joining medical records and pathogen similarity

James Kyle Miller, Jieshi Chen, Alexander Sundermann, Jane W. Marsh, Melissa I. Saul, Kathleen A. Shutt, Marissa Pacey, Mustapha M. Mustapha, Lee H. Harrison, Artur Dubrawski

Abstract: Highlights•Joining pathogen similarity with epidemiological data increases outbreak detection.•Joint root cause and patient inference improves detection of small outbreaks.•Machine learning methods can effectively tune outbreak detection models.