Public health officials can use a free web-based application, MappyHealth, the winning submission in the "Now Trending: #Health in My Community" challenge, to track health concerns in real time, according to HHS' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.
Health officials can use data they gain through MappyHealth to complement other health surveillance systems in identifying emerging health issues and as an early warning of possible public health emergencies in a community. The new application will be available in the next few weeks to state, territorial, tribal and local health agencies.
The "Now Trending" challenge started after local health officials asked ASPR for help in developing web-based tools that could make social media monitoring more accessible. According to the release, studies of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and the Haiti cholera outbreak demonstrated social media's power to indicate disease outbreaks earlier than conventional surveillance methods.
Submitted applications were judged based on their ability to be innovative, scalable, dynamic and user-friendly. The winning app had to use open-source Twitter data to automatically deliver the top five trending illnesses over a 24-hour period, according to the release.
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Health officials can use data they gain through MappyHealth to complement other health surveillance systems in identifying emerging health issues and as an early warning of possible public health emergencies in a community. The new application will be available in the next few weeks to state, territorial, tribal and local health agencies.
The "Now Trending" challenge started after local health officials asked ASPR for help in developing web-based tools that could make social media monitoring more accessible. According to the release, studies of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and the Haiti cholera outbreak demonstrated social media's power to indicate disease outbreaks earlier than conventional surveillance methods.
Submitted applications were judged based on their ability to be innovative, scalable, dynamic and user-friendly. The winning app had to use open-source Twitter data to automatically deliver the top five trending illnesses over a 24-hour period, according to the release.
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