The most recent example of this is the ongoing salmonella outbreak in the United States that has sickened more than 1,000 people and the cause of which is still unknown. HealthMap detected the outbreak before the CDC announced anything. "This will definitely save lives," said Larry Madoff, editor of ProMED, an infectious disease monitoring Web site run by the International Society for Infectious Disease. "This is a good step forward," said Madoff. "[HealthMap] helps us predict how disease outbreaks will happen." ProMed, unlike HealthMap, uses human moderators, not mathematical algorithms, who specialize in geographic regions or specific areas of disease to identify public health outbreaks. HealthMap isn't just for doctors, specialists and public health officials, however. If travelers are heading to Paraguay they can see if there is an instance of Yellow Fever, for instance, and get vaccinated before they leave. There is room for improvement however, says Madoff -- and Brownstein agrees. The HealthMap team is expanding operations and increasing the amount of detailed information for each particular outbreak and incorporating more "noisy" sources of information, such as blogs and chat rooms. These sources can be less reliable than traditional sources but could alert authorities to outbreaks much sooner than traditional detection methods. "We hope to improve that score of 95 percent by picking up that needle in the haystack, the quiet, early indication of potentially serious outbreaks," said Brownstein. Related Links: Eric Bland's blog: Interior Design |
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