IBM researchers on June 7 released free software to help public health officials prevent pandemics of diseases such as bird flu or dengue fever.
IBM's Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM) is a tool for public health scientists world-wide to forecast how diseases will spread in the same way meteorologists predict the paths of storms, according to researchers.
"STEM will allow public health officials to model the spread of a disease much like modeling a storm or hurricane," said IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences engineer Joseph Jasinski.