Szomszor, Martin, Kostkova, Patty and de Quincey, Ed (2012) #Swineflu: Twitter predicts swine flu outbreak in 2009. In: Szomszor, Martin and Kostkova, Patty, (eds.) Electronic Healthcare. Third International Conference, eHealth 2010, Casablanca, Morocco, December 13-15, 2010, Revised Selected Papers. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering (69). Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Germany, pp. 18-26. ISBN 9783642236341 (doi:10.1007/978-3-642-23635-8_3)

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Early warning systems for the identification and tracking of infections disease outbreaks have become an important tool in the field of epidemiology. While government lead initiatives to increase the sharing of surveillance data have improved early detection and control, along with advanced web monitoring and analytics services, the recent swine flu outbreak of 2009 demonstrated the important role social media has and the wealth of data it exposes. In this paper, we present an investigation into Twitter, using around 3 Million tweets gathered between May and December 2009, as a possible source of surveillance data and its feasibility to serve as an early warning system. By performing simple filtering and normalization, we demonstrate that Twitter can serve as a self-reporting tool, and hence, provide indications of increased infection spreading. Our initial findings indicate that Twitter can detect such events up to one week before conventional GP reported surveillance data.

Item Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	[1] First published: 2012. [2] Published as: Szomszor, Martin, Kostkova, Patty and de Quincey, Ed (2012) #Swineflu: Twitter predicts swine flu outbreak in 2009. In: Electronic Healthcare. Third International Conference, eHealth 2010, Casablanca, Morocco, December 13-15, 2010, Revised Selected Papers. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering (69). Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Germany, pp. 18-26. ISBN 9783642236341 (doi:10.1007/978-3-642-23635-8_3). [3] ISBN: 978-3-642-23634-1 (Print), 978-3-642-23635-8 (Online). [4] Series ISSN: 1867-8211 (Print), 1867-822X (Online). [5] This paper was originally presented in "Session 1: Epidemic Intelligence" at the Electronic Healthcare Third International Conference, eHealth 2010, held from 13-15 December 2010 in Casablanca, Morocco. [6] The book is published within the series: Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	epidemic intelligence, twitter, H1N1, pandemic flu
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine T Technology > T Technology (General)
Pre-2014 Departments:	School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Department of Information Systems & Digital Media
Related URLs:	Publisher Publisher Organisation
Last Modified:	14 Oct 2016 09:17
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/6936

Actions (login required)

View Item