Honors Theses and Capstones
Date of Award
Spring 2016
Project Type
Senior Honors Thesis
College or School
CEPS
Department
Mathematics and Statistics
Program or Major
Mathematics
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science
First Advisor
Adam Boucher
Abstract
A nosocomial infection is an infection that a patient develops while in a hospital or healthcare related setting, also known as a hospital acquired infection (HAI).This project has two foci: firstly to model a HAI within an individual, then secondly to understand community-level propagation effects of a nosocomial infection within a hospital ward. An analysis of a novel system of coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations (representing the HAI attack and immune response within an individual) was first completed. More specifically the model includes an s parameter that allows frailty to be patient specific. After the dynamic behaviors of the model were fully characterized, an agent based-modeling approach was used to understand community level dynamics. Of particular interest was the interplay between the time span of an infection and the distribution of immune responses across agents[1].
Recommended Citation
FitzGerald, Cody Eion, "Modeling Nosocomial Disease Outbreaks using a Combined Differential Equations and Agent Based-Modeling Approach" (2016). Honors Theses and Capstones. 302.
https://scholars.unh.edu/honors/302