The Link Stream of Contacts in a Whole Hospital

TL;DR

This study analyzes six months of contact data in a hospital to reveal structural and temporal contact patterns, providing insights into hospital contact dynamics and a methodology for link stream analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a methodology for analyzing link streams with classified nodes and uncovers key structural and temporal contact properties in a hospital setting.

Findings

Distinct daily contact network structures identified

Temporal contact patterns vary hour by hour

Methodology applicable to other link stream analyses

Abstract

We analyse a huge and very precise trace of contact data collected by a network of sensors during 6 months on the entire population of a rehabilitation hospital. We investigate both the topological structure of the average daily link stream of contacts in the hospital and the temporal structure of the evolution of these contacts hour by hour. Our main results are to unveil striking properties of these two structures in the considered hospital, and to present a methodology that can be used for analysing any link stream where nodes are classified into groups.