Slashdot Mirror
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."
Over the last three years, I have found the web to be superior to my doctors' knowledge.
I'd be very, very careful about the medical information you find on the web. A lot of it is antiquated and/or incorrect. I've had many doctors advise a lot of people about this. Example, my father got state-of-the-art prostate cancer treatment (it was minor, thank [deity of choice])that wasn't even documented on the web yet.
Then again, who knows, they could be putting up a front because of what insurance and drug companies have told them...
There are mountains to cross for those that are willing.
"The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'." It's even worse when those anecdotes are culled from miscellaneous websites, unreliably geocoded, and possibly multiply reported.
"2. There were some sickos during the civil war. Saving smallpox scabs in an envelope?"
Grinding up smallpox scabs and jabbing them into your skin used to be how you inoculated people for smallpox before the cowpox vaccination was invented/discovered. So collecting the scabs from people who had recently had it was a pretty common practice.