Twitter and Epidemiology

Even though the purpose of this blog is to research specific happenings in the world of Epidemiology, I decided to stray from that original idea for a moment. Today in class, someone mentioned that they had heard about a fairly new discovery in the field of medicine through Twitter. Coincidently, I found an article discussing the effects that Twitter and other social networking devices have on the way scientists and doctors handle epidemics.

The title of this article is "Can Twitter Help Predict Epidemics?" It was published today in "The Daily Democrat", by Brooke Jarvis. "The Daily Democrat" is a newspaper based in Woodland, California. The article can be found at http://www.dailydemocrat.com/digitalextras/ci_22723067/can-twitter-help-predict-epidemics.

The main focus of this article is, as the title states, how Twitter affects the way we see epidemics today. It talks about how before these social networking sites, information about where epidemics were happening and how bad they were had to be broadcasted a lot later on radio stations and television channels. Even the CDC (Center for Disease prevention and Control) takes about two weeks to publish new information about current epidemics.

With Twitter, the rate at which information can be passed through the people of the world has become much faster. Information such as the exact location of the disease, how bad it is, and what kind of medical attention is needed can be shared with the press of a button. Since many of these tweets have the location of their "author" tagged onto them, scientists find it very helpful in pegging exactly where people are talking about an illness the most. Chances are that wherever there is a spike in the conversation surrounding a certain disease, that disease is probably spreading around there.

Not only do the "Tweeters" help the doctors and scientists, but the doctors and scientists can use Twitter to help the "Tweeters". The article brings up a good point that not everybody pays attention to the news all the time and/or has limited access to the proper information. But almost everyone in the world knows and uses Twitter. Doctors can use Twitter to send out information warning about the disease, how to prevent it, how best to treat it, and where they can seek the correct medical attention. This form of alerting the public is both a faster and easier way to help decrease the severity of an epidemic.

As good as Twitter seems, this article also discusses some of the negatives of using Twitter. For starters, not everyone does have twitter or has the time to become "addicted" to it. Another good point made was that a huge wave of talk about an illness does not always mean there's an epidemic present. The example was given that there was huge talk about the flu over the course of a few days, but it was about how Kobe Bryant played with the flu. This might confuse scientists and doctors even more, because there was no actual flu epidemic.

I strongly believe that Twitter is an effective way of spreading important information. Every time the app for Twitter is updated, I see that the "news" categories are being filled with more and more talk about worldly events. There are hundreds of accounts, including The Red Cross and The CDC that have tips and articles talking about new diseases and what is happening in the world of health. Twitter is a fast and effective way of spreading this important information to the world.