Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments - A software engineering perspective on smart applications for AmI
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Over recent years, nosocomial infections have become a major Public Health problem in hospitals worldwide. In this context, it is very important to understand the underlying mechanisms of nosocomial pathogen transmission. This should in turn enable the devising and the assessment of control strategies. Here, we present an agent-based model of pathogen transmission in a hospital ward, NOSOSIM. In this model, the actions of patients and health-care workers are reproduced at all times in a spatially explicit environment, and pathogen colonization and transmission are simulated. NOSOSIM allows users to define simulation parameters such as: ward geography, including -but not limited to- the number of rooms; daily allocation and schedule of all present healthcare workers; patient status; microbiological and epidemiological characteristics of all circulating pathogens. After describing the model and its implementation, we illustrate its potential applications through two examples. In the first example, NOSOSIM is used to gain better understanding of the dynamics of pathogen circulation in a context of antibiotic exposure and between-pathogen competition. In the second example, NOSOSIM is used to assess the effectiveness of a control strategy (systematic hand hygiene).