Doctors Turn To the Web For Disease Tracking

schliz writes "US researchers believe that data from sources including discussion forums and news websites can help them better cope with outbreaks of disease. The team from the Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School has launched an automated data-gathering system called HealthMap to collate, organize and disseminate this online intelligence. The team argues that online information can be hugely valuable to medical professionals by helping with early event detection. The data can also support 'situational awareness' by providing current and local information about outbreaks."

Comments

Pandemics

[Stooshie]

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_brilliant_wants_to_stop_pandemics.html

The above talk is 26 minutes long and talks about using web activity monitoring to find possible outbreaks of pandemics before WHO.

It's got a ways to go...

[Madball]

Actual site is http://www.healthmap.org/

Interestingly enough, the US-Country Tag is affected by a google feed from www.healthnews.com, which is about Hand Foot Mouth Disease decrease in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore?

After playing around in the site for a while, I doubt its usefulness, but IANAD.

Re:Responses?

[zcnyu]

Scary! But not too far-fetched. For measles, no. But for H51B? Yes. Remember the AIDS scare from the 80's? Apparently there was a blacklist somewhere in the halls of D.C. at the time. The technology now makes it far easier.