Pathogen transfer through environment-host contact: an agent-based queueing theoretic framework
Authored by Cristina Lanzas, Shi Chen, Suzanne Lenhart, Judy D Day, Chihoon Lee, Michael Dulin
Date Published: 2018
DOI: 10.1093/imammb/dqx014
Sponsors:
United States National Science Foundation (NSF)
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
Queueing theory studies the properties of waiting queues and has been
applied to investigate direct host-to-host transmitted disease dynamics,
but its potential in modelling environmentally transmitted pathogens has
not been fully explored. In this study, we provide a flexible and
customizable queueing theory modelling framework with three major
subroutines to study the in-hospital contact processes between
environments and hosts and potential nosocomial pathogen transfer, where
environments are servers and hosts are customers. Two types of servers
with different parameters but the same utilization are investigated. We
consider various forms of transfer functions that map contact duration
to the amount of pathogen transfer based on existing literature. We
propose a case study of simulated in-hospital contact processes and
apply stochastic queues to analyse the amount of pathogen transfer under
different transfer functions, and assume that pathogen amount decreases
during the inter-arrival time. Different host behaviour (feedback and
non-feedback) as well as initial pathogen distribution (whether in
environment and/or in hosts) are also considered and simulated. We
assess pathogen transfer and circulation under these various conditions
and highlight the importance of the nonlinear interactions among contact
processes, transfer functions and pathogen demography during the contact
process. Our modelling framework can be readily extended to more
complicated queueing networks to simulate more realistic situations by
adjusting parameters such as the number and type of servers and
customers, and adding extra subroutines.
Tags
Agent-based model
contamination
Infections
transmission
Acquisition
Clostridium-difficile
Resistant staphylococcus-aureus
Surfaces
Queueing theory
Pathogen transfer and decay
Environment-host contact
Health care contact process
Model framework
Health-care workers
High-touch
Hands