Institute for Disease Modeling (IDM) is an institute within the Global Health Division of the

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was ...

. Established in 2008 as part of the Global Good Fund, a non-profit subsidiary of

Intellectual Ventures Intellectual Ventures is an American private equity company that centers on the development and licensing of intellectual property. Intellectual Ventures is one of the top-five owners of U.S. patents, as of 2011. Its business model focuses on ...

(IV) funded by Bill and Melinda Gates, IDM has transitioned in mid-2020 to the Gates Foundation. IDM specializes in

mathematical modelling of infectious disease Mathematical models can project how infectious diseases progress to show the likely outcome of an epidemic (including in plants) and help inform public health and plant health interventions. Models use basic assumptions or collected statistics alo ...

and other quantitative

global health Global health is the health of the populations in the worldwide context; it has been defined as "the area of study, research and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide". Problem ...

research. Its models include malaria, polio, measles,

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

and HIV (with EMOD). IDM releases source code of their stable models to the public. While at IV, the institute was located in

Bellevue, Washington Bellevue ( ) is a city in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area and has variously been characterized as a s ...

. After the outbreak of

Washington State Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washington ...

, IDM has transitioned to all-remote work with no physical offices. It will eventually relocate to the Gates Foundation's main office in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

Disease modeling software

EMOD is the group's individual-based disease modeling software (not a compartmental model) initially coded 2005. It has been released to the public as

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

. The software can model malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, measles, dengue, polio and typhoid. In 2020, IDM developed a designated

agent-based model named "Covasim." It was used initially to advise on decision-making during the

COVID-19 pandemic in Oregon The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached the U.S. state of Oregon on February 28, 2020. On that day, Governor Kate Brown created a coronavirus response team; on March 8 she declared a state of emergency; and on March 23 she issued a s ...

and in

, gaining national attention. Covasim, coded in

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

, is open-source and has been used by independent researchers around the world.

References

Sources

* *

External links

* *
COVID-19 Chapter 11: Modeling
''

This Podcast Will Kill You ''This Podcast Will Kill You'' is an American podcast hosted by disease ecologists and epidemiologists Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke. Its first full-length episode was released on October 31, 2017. New episodes were released weekly until the ...

'', May 4, 2020, interview with Dr. Mike Famulare from the Institute for Disease Modeling recorded April 29, 2020 starts at 28:30 Companies based in Bellevue, Washington Epidemiology Simulation software {{COVID-19-stub