An organization called SocialHealth, is reportedly having a great deal of success using Twitter to track the intensity and movement of flu outbreaks.
Social media sites like Twitter are teeming with flu news, from individuals giving moment-by-moment symptom updates to groups that tweet what seems like every known flu-related death as it happens.
Many organizations have tried to harness social media’s potential power to track where outbreaks are happening, but few have truly succeeded.
As most efforts are based on keyword searches, often the information they gather is irrelevant to actual illnesses – for example, people talking about how they’re suffering from a bad case of Bieber fever.
Another problem organizations have run into is culling through the tweets in a timely manner, giving people a chance to avoid an approaching wave of sickness.
An organization called SocialHealth, is reportedly having a great deal of success with working out some of those kinks.
They’ve created an algorithm that searches for symptom and illness reports in word groupings of three, making it less likely that unrelated information gets factored in.
From there it can track and report in real time as well as locate clusters and movement.
The system still has some hurdles to clear before its fully operable, but as long as people keep tweeting about how awful they feel, there’s hope.
