IBM offers its technology to battle infectious diseases

From the online WSJ (behind the cash wall), this story reports on the announcement today by IBM that it will provide computer technology and services to help study and track the potential bird flu pandemic.

IBM said it will combine electronic health information from hospitals, with information from road maps, airline travel schedules, bird-migration routes and other data on an epidemiological modeling framework known as STEM to form a giant picture of how a pandemic flu might spread. The company said it plans to make the framework available as an open-source technology, meaning the larger public-health community could use and update it regularly.

IBM also has "plans to use supercomputers to model influenza viruses, in hopes of trying to predict mutations."