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Web-Crawling Program Spots Disease Outbreaks
no1home writes "There is a story at Discovery Channel's site about a new utility for mapping disease. The premise is to have bots crawl the web looking for stories about disease outbreaks and log them onto a map. '"We were originally thinking about how we could expand disease surveillance and pick up outbreaks earlier than traditional methods," said John Brownstein of Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston, who created HealthMap in September of 2006 with Clark Friefeld, a software developer at Harvard Medical School.' But then it was noticed by Google.org and has since grown into its own website, HealthMap Global disease alert map, and claims to be able to identify 95% of all disease outbreaks, some of them before WHO or CDC."
CLOSE THE PORTS
Fascinating TED Talk on a similar (the same?) project? As I recall, some of video was a bit unpleasant to watch, but (IMHO) very worthwhile.
I'm a nature photographer.
The New York City Dept of Health monitors sales records of certain medications gathered from drugstore chains to detect disease outbreaks and biological attacks.
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
Well, it's not really a "map of disease"
breakouts. In fact the map part is rather just
a shiny pony?
A list could have done just the same amount
of good. Since for the most part each area has
one pushpin that just sums up the area.
[FWIW, I only looked at US pins.]
I was expecting a cluster map, like you see on...
Wunderground Wundermaps
or on...
http://www.housingmaps.com/
At least if it was a cluster map I could
look at an area and think, "I sure as heck
ain't traveling there for work this week."
I think if public interaction would be
allowed, that would turn up the dial to
a more 'fine' resolution rather than the
grainy "Cryptosporidium in local pools"
that I already know about cause I read
the local paper. Or that the measles
outbreak is almost contained. I can get
that from the 10pm news.
That further detracts from the usefulness
of this website as it stands, because I
doubt someone that reads the news less
than I do, would be more likely to go to
a website and search what new diseases
popped up this week. [All hypochondriacs
aside]
It's a good seed/foundation as long as
they have the financial stamina to keep
it going.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
At least if it was a cluster map I could look at an area and think, "I sure as heck ain't traveling there for work this week.
On a global scale, check out the RSOE EDIS (Emergency and Disaster Information Service).
It aggregates all sorts of disasters, from short-time events such as automobile accidents, and current tropical storms, to longer term ones, such as epidemics and forest fires.