January 4th, 2008 by ketyung
Bloggers and Internet marketers are striving hard for all sorts of methods to increase their blogs’ or websites’ Google PageRank. But, indeed, the Google PageRank is one god-given algorithm, which does not only benefit websites and blogs to make more money online, it also helps cut the transmission of superbugs (hospital-acquired infections) within hospitals using the PageRank algorithm.
The current problem faced by hospitals is they can’t trace how the superbug is being transmitted. Whether they are from particular objects such as doctors’ neckties, light switches etc. And what network routes the bugs spread across patients, staff, and the hospital environment.
If you’re familiar with Google PageRank, you should know the basic algorithm used to determine higher page rank will be based on how many incoming links to a website. The higher number of incoming links to a website, shall give higher page rank to that website. Researchers have found that using the basic algorithm of Google PageRank could help reduce the transmission of hospital acquired infections like the “superbug” MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), by making it more traceable.
Researchers at Bradford University, Beggs and Shepherd, have found using Google PageRank algorithm behind Google’s search engine, can make the transmission routes of superbugs much more traceable. The way they do it is by ranking routes of infection in the same way Google ranks search results.
Besides, they also take the method used by Google’s spider or crawler - when the spider crawls the web, it builds up a connectivity matrix of links between pages. Shepherd’s idea is also to build a similar matrix describing all interactions between people and objects in a hospital ward, based on observing normal daily activity.
Eventually, they’ll wanna develop a software tool based on the Google’s algorithm for managers to effectively analyze and trace the transmission routes of superbugs within a hospital, subsequently find out effective method to eliminate them.
Source [NewScientist], [Pic source]
Google PageRank,Google spider,Google search engine,methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus,Hospital-acquired infections,superbugs
Technorati Tags: Google PageRank, Google spider, Google search engine, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Hospital-acquired infections, superbugs
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March 23rd, 2008 at 7:08 am
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