Internet may help track infectious disease outbreaks

From ANI Washington, July 8: Internet discussion forums, listservs, and online news outlets could be an informative source of information on disease outbreaks, according to researchers from Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. And they have even launched a real-time, automated data-gathering system called HealthMap to gather, organize and disseminate this online intelligence. "Web-based electronic information sources can play an important role in early event detection and support situational awareness by providing current, highly local information about outbreaks, even from areas relatively invisible to traditional global public health efforts," said John Brownstein and colleagues from the HealthMap project. However, information overload and difficulties in distinguishing "signal from noise" pose substantial... [read full story]