Researchers at University of California, Los Angeles and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied whether certain search terms that are used on Google and topics covered on Twitter can point to a outbreak of a contagious disease. They focused on syphilis and found that by monitoring the incidence of certain terms, such as “STD” and “find sex”, they were able to identify hotspots that were eventually noticed by the CDC.
The research relied on machine learning algorithms that can crunch through a lot of data and spot correlations within it.
If put into practical use, simple monitoring of publicly available search term trends may help to spot outbreaks before most people even start calling their doctors. They even tried this on real data and showed that their model predicted spyhilis counts in every state within a 90% accuracy over an almost 3 year period.
Study in journal Preventive Medicine: Using social media as a tool to predict syphilis…
Via: UCLA…