Soft computing and infectious disease modeling: A review and prescription

Infectious disease modeling is a multi-disciplinary research activity that has made significant inroads over the last decade with respect to its acceptance as a valuable and practical tool for public health experts and decision makers. With the ability to deal with imprecise, approximate, and vague scenarios, soft computing can play an important role in expanding the use of these models. We present a review of soft computing techniques that have been used in infectious disease modeling as well as a prescription of future challenges and issues this discipline must address to be fully accepted by the public health community.