Detecting disease outbreaks in mass gatherings using internet data
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Detecting disease outbreaks in mass gatherings using internet data. / Yom-Tov, Elad; Borsa, Diana; Cox, Ingemar Johansson; McKendry, Rachel A.
I: Journal of Medical Internet Research, Bind 16, Nr. 6, e154, 2014.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Detecting disease outbreaks in mass gatherings using internet data
AU - Yom-Tov, Elad
AU - Borsa, Diana
AU - Cox, Ingemar Johansson
AU - McKendry, Rachel A.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - Mass gatherings, such as music festivals and religious events, pose a health care challenge because of the risk of transmission of communicable diseases. This is exacerbated by the fact that participants disperse soon after the gathering, potentially spreading disease within their communities. The dispersion of participants also poses a challenge for traditional surveillance methods. The ubiquitous use of the Internet may enable the detection of disease outbreaks through analysis of data generated by users during events and shortly thereafter. Objective: The intent of the study was to develop algorithms that can alert to possible outbreaks of communicable diseases from Internet data, specifically Twitter and search engine queries. Methods: We extracted all Twitter postings and queries made to the Bing search engine by users who repeatedly mentioned one of nine major music festivals held in the United Kingdom and one religious event (the Hajj in Mecca) during 2012, for a period of 30 days and after each festival. We analyzed these data using three methods, two of which compared words associated with disease symptoms before and after the time of the festival, and one that compared the frequency of these words with those of other users in the United Kingdom in the days following the festivals. Results: The data comprised, on average, 7.5 million tweets made by 12,163 users, and 32,143 queries made by 1756 users from each festival. Our methods indicated the statistically significant appearance of a disease symptom in two of the nine festivals. For example, cough was detected at higher than expected levels following the Wakestock festival. Statistically significant agreement (chi-square test, P
AB - Mass gatherings, such as music festivals and religious events, pose a health care challenge because of the risk of transmission of communicable diseases. This is exacerbated by the fact that participants disperse soon after the gathering, potentially spreading disease within their communities. The dispersion of participants also poses a challenge for traditional surveillance methods. The ubiquitous use of the Internet may enable the detection of disease outbreaks through analysis of data generated by users during events and shortly thereafter. Objective: The intent of the study was to develop algorithms that can alert to possible outbreaks of communicable diseases from Internet data, specifically Twitter and search engine queries. Methods: We extracted all Twitter postings and queries made to the Bing search engine by users who repeatedly mentioned one of nine major music festivals held in the United Kingdom and one religious event (the Hajj in Mecca) during 2012, for a period of 30 days and after each festival. We analyzed these data using three methods, two of which compared words associated with disease symptoms before and after the time of the festival, and one that compared the frequency of these words with those of other users in the United Kingdom in the days following the festivals. Results: The data comprised, on average, 7.5 million tweets made by 12,163 users, and 32,143 queries made by 1756 users from each festival. Our methods indicated the statistically significant appearance of a disease symptom in two of the nine festivals. For example, cough was detected at higher than expected levels following the Wakestock festival. Statistically significant agreement (chi-square test, P
KW - Data mining
KW - Infectious disease
KW - Infodemiology
KW - Information retrieval
KW - Mass gatherings
U2 - 10.2196/jmir.3156
DO - 10.2196/jmir.3156
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 24943128
AN - SCOPUS:84906243474
VL - 16
JO - Journal of Medical Internet Research
JF - Journal of Medical Internet Research
SN - 1439-4456
IS - 6
M1 - e154
ER -
ID: 154523237