Social Media Can Boost Disease Outbreak Monitoring According to San Diego State University Study
Monitoring social media websites like Twitter could help health officials and providers identify in real time severe medical outbreaks, allowing them to more efficiently direct resources and curb the spread of disease, according to a San Diego State University study published last month in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. For the study, lead researcher and San Diego State University geography professor Ming-Hsiang Tsou and his team used a program to monitor tweets that originated within a 17-mile radius of 11 cities. According to the study, nine of the 11 cities exhibited a statistically significant correlation between an uptick in the number of tweets mentioning the keywords and regional outbreak reports.
- "Using Twitter To Track the Spread of Influenza" (Medical News Today, 11/21).