Challenges in Developing Learning Algorithms to Personalize Treatment in Real Time
A formidable challenge in designing sequential treatments is to determine when and in which context it is best to deliver treatments. Consider treatment for individuals struggling with chronic health conditions. Operationally designing the sequential treatments involves the construction of decision rules that input current context of an individual and output a recommended treatment. That is, the treatment is adapted to the individual's context; the context may include current health status, current level of social support and current level of adherence for example. Data sets on individuals with records of time-varying context and treatment delivery can be used to inform the construction of the decision rules. There is much interest in personalizing the decision rules, particularly in real time as the individual experiences sequences of treatment. Here we discuss our work in designing online "bandit" learning algorithms for use in personalizing mobile health interventions.
A Tale of Two Parasites: how can Gaussian processes contribute to improved public health in Africa?
In this talk, I will rst make some general comments about the role of statistical modelling in scientic research, illustrated by two examples from infectious disease epidemiology. I will then describe in detail how statistical modelling based on Gaussian spatial stochastic processes has been used to construct region-wide risk maps to inform the operation of a multi-national control programme for onchocerciasis (river blindness) in equatorial Africa. Finally, I will describe work-in progress aimed at exploiting recent developments in mobile microscopy to enable more precise local predictions of community-level risk.
