A recent study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research has shown the potential of Twitter and other Internet data in tracking public health issues following large gatherings such as music festivals.
Researchers studied tweets and Internet searches made by users whose postings indicated attendance at one of nine music festivals and one major religious event in 2012. Analyzing this activity one month prior and following the event, researchers tracked posts and searches referencing disease symptoms, comparing the frequency with that of the general population.
Researchers were able to determine a statistically significant association between a disease symptom and two of the music festivals, and anecdotal evidence suggested a link between the emergence of a cough and one of the music festivals.
This is not the first study to suggest tweets can be useful in tracking public health trends and outbreaks. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and George Washington University in Washington, D.C., developed an algorithm using data from Twitter that is able to predict flu outbreaks with 85 percent accuracy, and another recent study found Twitter contains more than three times as many reports of adverse reactions for 23 commonly used medications than the Food and Drug Administration.
More Articles on Twitter:
FDA: Risk Information Must Be Part of Pharma, Device Companies' 140-Character Tweets
CDC, CMS to Host Twitter Chat on Safe Healthcare
Boston Children's, Harvard Medical School Given Research Access to Twitter's Data Trove