Framework contract with the ECDC

Together with two partners (Gesundheit Österreich Forschungs- und Planungs- Gmbh (GOeG) and Politechnika Wroclawska), we were selected in an international tendering process for a framework contract with the EU, specifically the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), to calculate new infection models. The ECDC’s commission for such models, which require simulations and models of the spread of infectious diseases, will now be put out to tender between four research teams over the next four years and awarded in a competitive process. The other teams are the Folkehelseinstituttet (NOR), a consortium of Universiteit Hasselt (BEL), Universiteit Antwerpen (BEL), Rijksinstituut Voor Volksgezondheid En Milieu (NED), Fondazione ISI - Istituto Per l’Interscambio Scientifico (ITA) and Safinea Ltd (IRL) as well as the Statens Serum Institut (DK).

The ECDC is an EU agency tasked with identifying, assessing and informing about infectious diseases. To fulfil this task, simulations and models are needed. Together with our partners at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology and Gesundheit Österreich Forschungs- und Planungs- GmbH, we offer a forecasting and scenario tool based on three models. (see cover picture)

The focus of dwh GmbH is on the population model, which will represent a synthetic population of more than 15 EU countries based on GEPOC, the population model developed jointly with the Vienna University of Technology since 2010. It will represent both the demographic structure and the contact networks through households, workplaces and schools. The partners at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology are creating an epidemic model which, based on the population and contact networks, simulates the spread of a selected pathogen from person to person via aerogenic or droplet infection and is compared and validated with the Austrian model. The results are the corresponding infected persons, broken down by pathogen, severity and demographic indicators. Gesundheit Österreich can use this data to calculate specific variables for scenarios or forecasts. Health economic factors such as hospital admissions and other variables relevant to the health system are simulated.

The models developed in this way enable the ECDC, scientific partners and all other interested parties to better assess what effects the spread of certain pathogens could have and what measures could be sensibly implemented.