Medicare begins a major change next month that could save older diabetics money and time when they buy crucial supplies to test their blood sugar – but it also may cause some confusion as patients figure out the new system.Figuring out where and when the next flu outbreak will occur may soon be less of a guessing game, thanks to technology from the meteorological world.
To predict when and where the flu may hit, scientists at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the National Center for Atmospheric Research have collaborated on a model that operates like a weather modeling system.
“This system can potentially be used to estimate the probability of regional outbreaks of the flu several weeks in advance,” said Alicia Karspeck, a scientist at NCAR and a co-author of a study published in October in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
After developing their model, Karspeck and Columbia University colleague Jeffrey Shaman ran it for the 2003 to 2008 flu seasons in New York.
The results, they wrote, showed that “real-time skillful predictions of peak timing (of a flu outbreak) can be made more than 7 weeks in advance of the actual peak.”
