Evidence map›Paper›PMID 28830104›Full record

ReviewThe Journal of infectious diseases2016

Connecting Mobility to Infectious Diseases: The Promise and Limits of Mobile Phone Data.

Amy Wesolowski, Caroline O Buckee, Kenth Engø-Monsen, C J E Metcalf

Abstract readReview
In one paragraph

Review in The Journal of infectious diseases, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 106 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
106citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

106 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Characterizing the impact of incorporating spatially aggregated human mobility data into infectious disease models.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
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  10. Characterizing population-level changes in human behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
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46 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Amy WesolowskiDepartment of Epidemiology.
Caroline O BuckeeDepartment of Epidemiology.
Kenth Engø-MonsenTelenor Research, Fornebu, Norway.
C J E MetcalfDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Funding

Understanding and controlling antibiotic resistanceU54GM088558 · NIGMS · HARVARD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH · PI HANAGE, WILLIAM · 2009 to 2018
$26.4M
NIGMS NIH HHS U54 GM088558Wellcome TrustWellcome Trust 106866/Z/15/Z
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Human travel can shape infectious disease dynamics by introducing pathogens into susceptible populations or by changing the frequency of contacts between infected and susceptible individuals. Quantifying infectious disease-relevant travel patterns on fine spatial and temporal scales has historically been limited by data availability. The recent emergence of mobile phone calling data and associated locational information means that we can now trace fine scale movement across large numbers of individuals. However, these data necessarily reflect a biased sample of individuals across communities and are generally aggregated for both ethical and pragmatic reasons that may further obscure the nuance of individual and spatial heterogeneities. Additionally, as a general rule, the mobile phone data are not linked to demographic or social identifiers, or to information about the disease status of individual subscribers (although these may be made available in smaller-scale specific cases). Combining data on human movement from mobile phone data-derived population fluxes with data on disease incidence requires approaches that can tackle varying spatial and temporal resolutions of each data source and generate inference about dynamics on scales relevant to both pathogen biology and human ecology. Here, we review the opportunities and challenges of these novel data streams, illustrating our examples with analyses of 2 different pathogens in Kenya, and conclude by outlining core directions for future research.

Indexed as

Cell PhoneData CollectionEpidemiological MonitoringSpatio-Temporal AnalysisCommunicable DiseasesHumansKenyaBig Datahuman mobilitymobile phonesspatial epidemiology

Identifiers

PMID28830104
PMCPMC5144902

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.