Healthmap points out disease outbreaks
HealthMap screen capture
Courtesy Art Oglesby
Want a warning about disease outbreaks?
With the internet's new capabilities, new information is highly contagious. The web is increasingly being used to exchange information about public health and disease outbreaks. Now, thanks to HealthMap anyone can track where and when infectious disease outbreaks are occurring.
Web crawlers, automated translation, GIS mapmaking, ISP tracking, and cell phone imagery have created a world where, for good or ill, rumors of outbreaks outpace confirmation. The Journal of Life Sciences
Colored pins point to disease outbreaks
Using what is often referred to as Web 2.0 dynamics, Healthmap.org crawls the internet for disease outbreak information, integrating information from various sources like Google News, ProMED, and World Health Organization disease alerts. Through an automated text processing system, the data is sorted by disease and overlayed by location on top of Google Maps.
Want to learn more about HealthMap?
HealthMap was created by Clark Freifeld and John Brownstein through Children's Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP) at Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology. Click this link to view a presentation about HealthMap given at a Georeferencing Workshop at Harvard, March 21, 2008 by John Brownstein.
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