Digital Epidemiology Book: Table of Contents

What should be in a book on digital epidemiology?

I’m writing a book about digital epidemiology. Indeed, I’ve almost completed the book, and I’m finishing the last two chapters in parallel.

This spring, I am teaching a new class at EPFL called Digital Epidemiology (BIO-512). The manuscript for the book will serve as teaching material for the course, but I plan to publish it also as a book for a broader audience later this year.

As I write in the preface, the book

“…tries to provide a broad conceptual overview of epidemiology and its digital approaches. It should be useful for two audiences, apart from the generally interested readers. The first group is those with expertise in epidemiology, or public health, seeking to understand how they can leverage digital methods for their work. The second group is those with technical expertise, seeking to apply it to epidemiological problems or public health problems. The COVID-19 pandemic has led many highly skilled technical people to start applying their expertise to matters of public health, which is very encouraging. However, the danger is that if outside experts lack key concepts of epidemiology, their work may end up being flawed at best, and sometimes useless, if not even misleading. This is a wasted opportunity, as the field of epidemiology will benefit from all of the technical expertise it can get, given the public health challenges we will continue to face. I hope this book will allow that group to get up to speed rapidly. At the same time, those already working in epidemiology may be interested in new technological approaches and look for a good overview of digital epidemiology. I hope they will find the book helpful as a starting point in their explorations.”

There are two important philosophies underlying the book: 1) breath over depth, and 2) a strong focus on epidemiology: a bit more than half of the book is related to non-digital aspects of epidemiology. The key idea is that digital epidemiology is still epidemiology, and thus any activity in digital epidemiology must be based on a solid understanding of epidemiology. The most insightful future epidemiological studies will be done by people who have both an understanding of epidemiology, as well as sufficient know-how in digital technology. To achieve this goal in one book, a priority must be put on conceptual breadth, rather than depth.

The table of contents

With that said, here is my table of contents, with chapter 10 missing subtitles as I’m still structuring that chapter.

If you think something is missing, I’d love to hear from you, either in the comments, or via marcel.salathe@epfl.ch.

Preface

1. Epidemiology
1.1 What is epidemiology?
1.2 Public health surveillance
1.3 Incidence and prevalence
1.4 Case definition
1.5 Morbidity
1.6 Mortality, lethality, fatality

2. Testing & Diagnostics
2.1 False positives and false negatives
2.2 Sensitivity and specificity
2.3 The ROC curve
2.4 Positive and negative predictive values
2.5 Likelihood ratios
2.6 Rule in, rule out

3. Epidemiological Studies
3.1 Case reports and case series
3.2 Ecological studies
3.3 Cross-sectional studies
3.4 Case-control studies
3.5 Cohort studies
3.6 Randomized controlled trials
3.7 Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
3.8 Causal inference

4. Infectious Disease Epidemiology
4.1 Emergence
4.2 Transmission
4.3 Contagion
4.4 Course of infection
4.5 Heterogeneities
4.6 Vaccination
4.7 Control

5. Modeling Infectious Diseases
5.1 The basic SIR model
5.2 Mitigating infectious disease spread
5.3 The SEIR model
5.4 The SEIRS model
5.5 Open epidemics
5.6 Stochastic models

6. Spatial Models & Network Models
6.1 Making models more complex
6.2 A basic spatial model
6.3 Nonspatial dynamics in a spatial world
6.4 Metapopulations
6.5 A first network model
6.6 Small world networks
6.7 Fat-tailed networks

7. Digital Contact Tracing
7.1 Conventional contact tracing
7.2 Digital contact tracing
7.3 Privacy-preserving protocols
7.4 From proximity tracing to presence tracing
7.5 Implementations of digital contact tracing
7.6 Effectiveness of digital contact tracing
7.7 The future of digital contact tracing

8. Digital Public Health Surveillance
8.1 Search queries & access logs
8.2 Participatory surveillance
8.3 Social media
8.4 Mobile phones
8.5 Wearable sensors
8.6 Challenges of digital public health surveillance
8.7 The future of digital public health surveillance

9. Digital Health Cohorts & Trials
9.1 The emergence of digital studies
9.2 Examples of digital cohorts & trials
9.3 Recruitment, consent, and retention
9.4 Data collection
9.5 Data analysis
9.6 The future of digital cohorts and trials

10. Ethics & Digital Epidemiology
(Still in progress, covering topics such as public health ethics, digital inequity, misinformation, the relationship between the tech industry and public health, etc.)