| Poulsbo-based Paladin Data Systems could receive as much as $4 million in government funding this year for a bioterrorism-related project. The funding was announced in December by Sen. Patty Murray, who visited the facility and said she has secured $4 million in a Department of Defense Appropriations bill that would allow the company to expand its current federally funded project called the Outbreak Detection Information Network (ODIN).
The new funds will allow Paladin and its partners, the University of Washington and the nonprofit Foundation for Healthcare Quality, to continue to develop a so-called “syndromic surveillance” system that could analyze large amounts of data to detect a bioterrorism attack. It could also detect an outbreak of a disease such as SARS or bird flu.
“It looks for disease trends within a larger population,” said Gary Macy, a partner in the firm and the project manager for Paladin.
The project is using new science to figure how to gather data and provide the results visually so they could best be interpreted. Paladin Data Systems is writing the software components of the project.
The partnership received $1.8 million from the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in January 2005 to continue research and expand the Outbreak Detection Information Network (ODIN), which was first created by Murray in 2002. The $4 million funding, if approved, will expand the project further and allow it to be formalized. At press time, the bill was in a conference committee and Murray said although the U.S. House has not appropriated anything for the bill yet, the worst case scenario would be a smaller amount of funding as a compromise.
“We are reasonably confident it will pass at some level,” Macy said.
The expansion of the project would add an additional layer of research to ODIN. The U.S. Army has asked Paladin and its partners to develop a way to help detect post-traumatic stress syndrome in soldiers. Paladin will work with the Madigan Army Medical Center to track and monitor symptoms of the disorder in soldiers by creating a new application for ODIN, using “the same tools and research and applying them to a different set of data to identify patterns,” Macy said.
The project will benefit public health in Washington: The ultimate goal for ODIN is to roll it statewide, with counties using it to analyze and manage their public health data, which would not include any individual names or other personal information that can be traced to a specific person, so there are no concerns about privacy.
“This is a leading edge project …and it's nice to have it in Kitsap County,” Macy said. | 