Global Hepatitis Outbreak and Surveillance Technology (GHOST)

Executive Summary

The CDC’s Division of Viral Hepatitis team is developing the Global Hepatitis Outbreak and Surveillance Technology (GHOST), a cloud-based, public health research tool to help state and local health departments more quickly detect and fight the spread of Hepatitis C.

There are about 3.5 million Americans infected with Hepatitis C, which attacks the liver and can lead to cirrhosis and other serious health problems. The GHOST platform identifies transmission clusters of Hepatitis C patients and allows states and local labs to access the web-based portal and immediately start to investigate a cluster or outbreak and quickly detect and fight the spread of the disease. GHOST integrates new laboratory methods and analytical web-based tools that help scientists visualize the spread of Hepatitis C and begin to identify “super spreaders.”

The GHOST team is now piloting the system in five states (Alaska, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York and Tennessee) and has heard from public health officials in Latvia and Georgia interested in the system.
GHOST represents a paradigm shift by giving state laboratories the ability to perform independent, inexpensive, and accurate outbreak investigations and then enabling collaboration and coordination across the public health system through a cloud-based system. Moreover, the modular structure and automation tools for GHOST are readily scalable to cyber-molecular surveillance of other viral infections.

A project supported by the: HHS Secretary's Ventures Fund

Team Members

Gilberto Vaughan, (Project Lead) CDC
David Campo, CDC
Seth Sims, CDC
Garrett Longmire, CDC
Guoliang Xia, CDC
Zoya Dimitrova, CDC
James Lara, CDC
Amanda Sue, CDC
Sumathi Ramachandran, CDC
Magdalena Medrzycki, CDC
Francesco Criscuolo, CDC
Joseph Forbi, CDC
Lilia Ganova-Raeva, CDC
Lili Punkova, CDC
Yulin Lin, CDC
Yury Khudyakov, CDC

Milestones

February 2017: Project received support from the HHS Secretary's Ventures Fund

Project Sponsor

John Ward, Director, Division of Viral Hepatitis, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, CDC

Additional Information

Blog: HHS Secretary's Ventures Team Helps Detect Disease Outbreaks
Digging Deeper Into Hepatitis C Virus Outbreaks

Contributing Partners: 

Association of Public Health Laboratories
National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH