About Project Tycho

Data Research

Our data research in global health informatics aims to improve access, representation, and interoperability of data produced by health agencies and researchers working in global health. A vast amount of data is being created in global health and these data are of incredible value for research and innovation towards healthier lives. These data are often not accessible to researchers or practitioners due to a wide range of barriers. We found six main barriers that limit data sharing in public health: technical, economic, incentives, political, ethical, and legal barriers. This research was published in BMC Public Health.

Our global health informatics research aims to overcome these challenges. Specifically, our research is directed to improve compliance of global health data with FAIR guidelines through three main activities.

1. Standardize data about diseases and their determinants
   

   Much global health data is being collected, but these data are often not available in a standard format. We have developed Project Tycho standard data formats (version 1.0 and version 1.1) and will continue to improve these formats to meet the needs of most users in global health. Standardization is the key to making data interoperable and reusable.

2. Create machine-interpretable metadata
   

   Metadata is essential to improve FAIR compliance of global health data. Multiple metadata formats are already available to describe global health data. We use the DATS metadata format developed by the bioCADDIE DataMed project and the DataCite XML metadata format to describe Project Tycho datasets. We also include JSON-LD on the landing page for each dataset.

3. Make data widely available to users
   

   To maximize reuse of data to improve global health, we make our standardized datasets freely available to researchers, practitioners, students, and any other interested users, for any non-commercial use under a CC BY 4.0 license. Our informatics research aims to improve our graphical user interface, to enable user data analytics and visualizations, and to optimize our application programming interface (API) so users can programmatically extract and use Project Tycho data.

Data Service

We help researchers to make data available and to use available data for their research. We can help researchers to make their data available to others in one of the Project Tycho standard data formats. We can create digital object identifiers (DOIs) that will persistently identify a research dataset and can help future users to give credit to the original dataset creator. We can also help researchers to explore and use available data from Project Tycho for their research.

Past Research

Our global health research has aimed to improve infectious disease control in countries around the world and has been published in top journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and PNAS. Our work has also been featured in Nature, Science, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Forbes Magazine, and others. We used disease surveillance data to study large-scale patterns of disease spread across country borders and to assess the impact of childhood vaccination programs.

Epidemic spread of infectious disease

We used large-scale global health data to study patterns of spread for epidemic diseases, particularly mosquito-borne diseases in Southeast Asia and Latin America such as dengue, Zika, and chikungunya virus. We worked with partners in eight Southeast Asia countries to study patterns of dengue virus and their relation to climate factors. We found that major epidemics occurred simultaneously in most countries and detected traveling waves of dengue spread. We also found a strong correlation with high temperatures and El Niño. This work was published in PNAS and featured in international media.

Impact of childhood vaccination programs

We also studied the historical impact of childhood vaccination programs in the United States and Europe. Using 125 years of weekly disease surveillance data, we found that 100 million cases of seven childhood diseases were prevented by vaccination in the US between 1924 and 2010. This work was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and was widely featured by national and international media.

Improve access to global health data

We worked with health agencies around the world to improve access to standardized data. Many agencies collect data and make these data available, but not in a format that is easy to use. In addition, every agency uses a different format. We helped agencies to approach data access from a user perspective and to standardize data for optimal interoperability and reuse by others. We collaborated with the US Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, the Taiwan Center for Disease Control, the Colombia Instituto Nacional de Salud, the Vietnam National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology, and many others.

Project Tycho is hosted by the Department of Biomedical Informatics and the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI)

The DBMI in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine aims to apply informatics to improve biomedical research, clinical care, and global health using innovative methods that include genomic and proteomic data mining, natural language processing, machine learning, and biosurveillance. Project Tycho is managed by the MIDAS Coordination Center, housed in DBMI and led by Dr. Harry Hochheiser. The MIDAS Coordination Center supports the MIDAS Network’s goal of advancing science to improve global preparedness and response against infectious disease threats through research, training, promotion, and service.

Past Collaborations

The Project Tycho team has collaborated with faculty and students across the University of Pittsburgh. The Project Tycho team has also worked with faculty and students at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and Carnegie Mellon University.

Current Funder

NIH

Project Tycho is currently funded through the MIDAS Coordination Center (MCC). The MCC is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIGMS) program for Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) grant R24GM153920.

Past Funders

Project Tycho received funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences through the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) Center of Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh. MIDAS funding supported the standardization and dissemination of Project Tycho data from the US and globally, and research by Project Tycho investigators on the impact of vaccination programs and patterns of epidemic diseases.

Project Tycho also received funding from the NIH Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Initiative through K01 funding. The NIH Big Data to Knowledge Initiative supported collaborative work between Project Tycho investigators and a team at the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) to make global health data more compliant with FAIR guiding principles and to explore the possibility of automating data integration for epidemic models.

Project Tycho was previously funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which supported activities such as the global expansion of the scope of Project Tycho and research on transmission patterns of vector-borne diseases in Southeast Asia and Latin America, including a study published in PNAS that found a strong relationship between high temperature and synchrony of dengue outbreaks across eight different countries.

Project Tycho outreach activities were previously partially funded by the Benter Foundation in Pittsburgh through the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory (PHDL) International Fellows program. This program trained scientists and policy makers from low- and middle income countries in disease modeling and data management for global health.