In the introductory talk of this mini-symposium, Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths from University of Oxford, will discuss how ABMs can be combined with digital technology, such as machine-learning methods and large-language models, to better understand transmission of both respiratory and sexually-transmitted diseases, and as tools for pandemic preparedness. As well as introducing the minisymposium,...
Background
Agent-based models (ABMs) allow detailed simulation of people and their interactions. However, ABMs often run slowly and are complicated to configure, which has limited their use. Starting with Covasim (for COVID-19), we developed several ABMs designed to make modeling more accessible for people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets. Recently, we codified the principles of these...
Background: Despite declining HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) in the Netherlands, a recent plateau and the high proportion of late-stage diagnoses (29% in 2024) indicate ongoing transmission and delayed detection. Infections introduced through immigration are increasingly relevant in this low-incidence setting, motivating a reassessment of testing guidelines, which we...
Up until now, the main use of social contact studies in epidemic modelling has been to create a next generation matrix containing mean number of contacts between different age groups, in order to capture heterogeneity in contacts between age groups. However, empirical evidence show that the majority of variation in contacts is not between age-groups, but within age groups, and also within...
In the first presentation, Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths from University of Oxford, will discuss how ABMs can be combined with digital technology, such as machine-learning methods and large-language models, to better understand transmission of both respiratory and sexually-transmitted diseases. Jasmina will discuss recent work by her team to integrate digital technology to generate realistic...
