Flu spotting
April 30th, 2009 by rbanks
Tracking Internet Chatter Helps Spot Swine Flu Outbreak
“Veratect, a Seattle-based biosurveillance startup, claims they alerted the Centers for Disease Control to the situation in Mexico — where health officials suspect swine flu has killed up to 149 people — on April 16, before even the Mexican health authorities declared a problem. How’d they get ahead of the outbreak? By monitoring and analyzing the flow of social media traffic along with more official reports, the company’s CEO said. “We started picking up the early indicators of social disruption, whether it shows up on blogs or Twitter,” said Bob Hart, the CEO of Veratect. “We can pick up the first indicators of behavioral changes” 
Wired Science
