Methodological Development

National Human Genome Research Institute

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

We continue to develop and employ novel methods aimed at measuring, describing and modeling social networks. During the current reporting period, we published a novel framework for modeling multivariate or multi- level network systems. This innovation allows for addressing questions related to network measurement and offers potential for modeling the complexity of social network systems by threading across relations measured on the same set of entities. In addition, new research has examined how co-presence metrics derived from hospital administrative data can be used as an index test to predict nosocomial infection, identify inpatients who are subclinically infected, and to evaluate the impact of social influence on mortality in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy in an open setting. Novel metrics of co-presence have been developed, including a measure of consistent co-presence and co-presence thresholds that represent critical windows that increase the likelihood of infection during outbreaks of hospital born infections. During the reporting period, one manuscript from this work was published this past year.