Internet data miners strike disease detection gold

[Tonka]

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v18/n2/full/nm0212-185.html

Internet data miners strike disease detection gold

Rebecca Hersher

Since the rise of web search engines in the 1990s, scientists have scoured the Internet for up-to-the-minute clues about the next big pandemic. For the most part, this type of data-mining has remained an academic exercise: researchers have retrospectively shown that Twitter posts and Google search terms can be used to detect and monitor disease outbreaks as accurately as traditional tracking methods can, but with greater speeds and lower costs. Now, however, designers of such online systems say it's time for the technologies to be used as first-line tools by public health agencies worldwide.

?Confidence in these systems is growing"...more from the source.