TRACKING INFECTIONS WITH TWITTER BY DR.T.V.RAO MD

1. TRACKING INFECTIONS WITH TWITTER
Dr.T.V.Rao MD
We live in an information age where matters are moving faster than we think,
However all information is not accurate and precise to apply to the Humans as Medicine is not
experimental and should have protocols confined to peer reviews It is difficult for members of the
general public to differentiate between bona fide sites and those set up by interested, but possibly
biased, individuals. In the future, more work needs to be done on identification of those sites, which are
based on evidence-based medicine, so that the publics are kept safe. On a typical day, >10 million
people search for health-related information on the Internet. To survive to the changing needs and
technology Many doctors are technology enthusiasts, and the varied research papers available to read
regarding the use of Twitter in many different fields in Medicine are testament to that enthusiasm.
Twitter has been shown to be a fast and reliable method for disease surveillance of common illnesses
like influenza. Twitter is a fantastic data resource for many tasks: primarily disease surveillance (Collier,
2012; Signorini et al., 2011), whereby public health officials track infection rates of common diseases.
Standard government data sources take weeks while Twitter provides an immediate population measure
It should be recognized that the new generations of doctors emerging now into the work place and into
research have never known a world without internet access and the World Wide Web, and it is only to
be expected that their research will be based upon a medium that they are not only extremely
comfortable with but which is part of their everyday lives. Technology proficient physicians have
demonstrated enthusiasm in adopting social media for their work. One American study by Lulic (2013) -
‘Analysis of emergency physicians' Twitter accounts’ - aimed to identify and create the largest directory
of emergency physicians on Twitter, analyse their user accounts and reveal details to those whom the
physicians are networking with0. Several web search tools were used to identify and locate English
speaking emergency physicians on Twitter. Social media is being investigated as a tool in medical and
dental education. With social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and everyone connected at all times
on their mobile devices, the human cloud is ready and waiting. for creating knowledge and indeed might
lead to more people working together to improve knowledge and practice in the Medical profession. The
innovative work of some Rochester researchers is only as far away as your fingertips. Faculty in several
disciplines are creating mobile applications for smartphones and tablets as a way to explore important
aspects of the digital age—as well as to address social, medical, and clinical issues and demonstrate
the artistic potential of the technology.
Mining Patterns’: Germ Tracker Understanding how diseases spread is an ongoing, urgent pursuit for
public health—but traditional data collection is slow and limited. That’s where an innovation like Adam
Sadilek’s Germ Tracker can step in. Sadilek, a postdoctoral fellow in computer science, and
collaborators released the app this fall. Germ Tracker follows tweets to identify locations where people
are sick. The results of the data analysis show up on a national map, with each tweet marked in color
from red to green, denoting the spectrum from sick to healthy. When used on a mobile device, Germ
Tracker uses GPS to indicate where a user is located when tweeting. “People struggle with modeming
how epidemics grow, and how people infect each other. And there’s not enough data with this kind of
granularity,” says Sadilek. “When a person comes to the hospital, you don’t know who he’s met, what
bus he has ridden. This kind of app fills in some of the blanks, so you can begin to reason about the
spread of epidemics. It builds on a giant iceberg of research that we’ve done before on mining patterns
in social media.” When used on a mobile device, Germ Tracker uses GPS to indicate where a user is
located when tweeting. “People struggle with modeling how epidemics grow, and how people infect
each other. And there’s not enough data with this kind of granularity,” . “When a person comes to the
hospital, you don’t know who he’s met, what bus he has ridden. This kind of app fills in some of the
blanks, so you can begin to reason about the spread of epidemics. It builds on a giant iceberg of
research that we’ve done before on mining patterns in social media.” The results of the data analysis
show up on a national map, with each tweet marked in colors from red to green, denoting the spectrum
from sick to healthy. “We have an automated model that goes through the tweets, ‘reads’ them and
decides if the person is sick. It looks at the tweet in the entire context of the sentence, not keywords. It
has about 2 million features it con-Siders for any given sentence.
INDIA WITH MORE THAN 1 BILLION POPULATION AND MILLIONS OF INFECTIONS SHOULD

2. BUILD ITS OWN TRACKING INFORMATION ON INFECTIOUS DISEASE AND MANY EFFECTIVE
MEASURES CAN BE BUILD TO BRING IN PUBLIC AWARENESS IN PARTICULAR TO
TUBERCULOSIS, DENGUE MALARIA OTHER COMMON INFECTIONS IN THE COUNTRY
THE ARTICLE IS FORMULATED FOR THE FUTURISTIC VISION OF YOUNG MEDICAL
PROFESSIONALS FOR TRACKING INFORMATION ON HEALTH AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES
LEARN MORE WITH TWITTER
Ref -1Adopted for wider information -Is There an App for That? Rochester faculty put new technology at
your fingertips. By Kathleen McGreevy University of Manchester
2 The Potential Use of Twitter in Medicine Author: Elise Cranfield Research Paper based on lectures at
the Medlink Conferencesat Nottingham University in December 2013
DR.T.V.RAO MD Professor of Microbiology Freelance writer