Abstract
Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) are recognized worldwide as a major threat to hospital users. In this study, we present the Multi-Agent modelling and simulation of HAI propagation dynamics through exogenous cross-infection by a contact transmission route in a hospital ward. The model relies on the Event Based Modelling and Simulation approach. It is meant to deal with a wide range of pathogen types and scenarios of their spread within a hospital environment, which can be extended to integrate relevant emerging factors in the dynamic evolution of HAIs. The Agent-Based application was validated through a virtual simulation of a case study built in a Unity 3D environment, which generates a real time infection risk map. The simulation represents the building and its users in the situation of HAI risk in a coherent and dynamic system. It allows for the visualization of contamination propagation due to human spatial behaviour and activities. The case study was tested through a what-if scenario, allowing for the real-time visualization of transmission and assessing the effectiveness of different prevention and control measures on pathogen propagation. Of further interest was an understanding of the influences of architectural design and space distribution.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
World Health Organization: (WHO) Prevention of hospital-acquired infections (2002)
World Health Organisation: (WHO) Practical Guidelines for Infection Control in Health Care Facilities (2004)
Schaumann, D., Kalay, Y.E., Hong, S.W., Simeone, D.: Simulating human behavior in not-yet built environments by means of event-based narratives, pp. 1047–1054 (2015)
Fatah, C.: Sensitivity analysis for simulation-based decision making: application to a hospital emergency service design. Simul. Model. Pract. Theory 20, 99–111 (2012)
Hutzschenreuter, A.K., Bosman, P.A.N., Blonk-Altena, I., van Aarle, J., La Poutré, H.: Agent-based patient admission scheduling in hospitals (2008)
Jones, S.S., Evans, R.S.: An agent based simulation tool for scheduling emergency department physicians. In: AMIA Symposium Proceedings, pp. 338–342 (2008)
Cabrera, E., Taboada, M., Iglesias, M.L., Epelde, F., Luque, E.: Optimization of healthcare emergency departments by agent-based simulation. Procedia Comput. Sci. 4, 1880–1889 (2011)
Mielczarek, B., Uziałko-Mydlikowska, J.: Application of computer simulation modeling in the health care sector: a survey. Simulation 88, 197–216 (2012)
Friesen, M.R., McLeod, R.D.: A survey of agent-based modeling of hospital environmentss. IEEE Access 2, 227–233 (2014)
Meng, Y., Davies, R., Hardy, K., Hawkey, P.: An application of agent-based simulation to the management of hospital-acquired infection. J. Simul. 4, 60–67 (2010)
Barnes, S., Golden, B., Wasil, E., Smith, R.H.: MRSA transmission reduction using agent-based modeling and simulation. INFORMS J. Comput. 22, 635–646 (2010)
Temime, L., Kardas-Sloma, L., Opatowski, L., Brun-Buisson, C., Boëllef, P.Y., Guillemot, D.: NosoSim: an agent-based model of nosocomial pathogens circulation in hospitals. Procedia Comput. Sci. 1, 2245–2252 (2010)
Codella, J., Safdar, N., Heffernan, R., Alagoz, O.: An agent-based simulation model for clostridium difficile infection control. Med. Decis. Mak. 35, 211–229 (2015)
Pethes, R., Ferenci, T., Kovacs, L.: Infectious hospital agents: an individual-based simulation framework. In: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC 2016, pp. 3434–3439 (2017)
Weaver, W.: Science and complexity. Am. Sci. 36, 536–544 (1948)
Schaumann, D., Date, K., Kalay, Y.E., Israel, T.: An Event Modeling Language (EML) to simulate use patterns in built environments (2017)
World Health Organisation: WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care: First Global Patient Safety Challenge Clean Care Is Safer Care. World Health. 30, 270 (2009)
Boyce, J.M., Pittet, D.: Morbidity and mortality weekly report: report guideline for hand hygiene in health-care settings recommendations of the healthcare infection control practices centers for disease control and prevention TM. Centers Dis. Control Prev. 51, 1–45 (2002)
Schaumann, D., et al.: A computational framework to simulate human spatial behavior in built environments. In: Proceeding of the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design, pp. 121–128 (2016)
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank prof. Jacob Yahav, prof. Francesco Maddalena and prof. Dino Borri for their methodological assistance, as well as the following research group members for their useful comments and insights: K. Date, E. Eizenberg, M. Gath Morad, L. Morhayim, N. Pilosof and E. Zinger.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Conceptualization, investigation, methodology, formalization and writing D.E.; software D.E. and D.S.; review and editing D.E., D.S. and D.C.; supervision and project administration D.C. and Y.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Esposito, D., Schaumann, D., Camarda, D., Kalay, Y.E. (2020). Multi-Agent Modelling and Simulation of Hospital Acquired Infection Propagation Dynamics by Contact Transmission in Hospital Wards. In: Demazeau, Y., Holvoet, T., Corchado, J., Costantini, S. (eds) Advances in Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Trustworthiness. The PAAMS Collection. PAAMS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12092. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49778-1_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49778-1_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-49777-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-49778-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)