The Internet has become a critical medium for clinicians, public health practitioners, and lay-people
seeking health information. Data about diseases and outbreaks are disseminated …

Objective: Unstructured electronic information sources, such as news reports, are proving to
be valuable inputs for public health surveillance. However, staying abreast of current …

… Characterization stages include: (a) identifying disease and location; (b) determining
relevance—namely, whether a given report refers to any current outbreak; and (c) grouping …

… Regarding the Ushahidi deployment in Haiti, Craig Clark of the United States Marine
Corps said, “I cannot overemphasize to you what the work of the Ushahidi/Haiti has provided …

Background Traditional adverse event (AE) reporting systems have been slow in adapting
to online AE reporting from patients, relying instead on gatekeepers, such as clinicians and …

10.7554/eLife.02851.001 The leishmaniases are vector-borne diseases that have a broad
global distribution throughout much of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Despite representing a …

The increasing number of emerging infectious disease events that have spread internationally,
such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the 2009 pandemic A/H1N1, …

Free or low-cost sources of unstructured information, such as Internet news and online
discussion sites, provide detailed local and near real-time data on disease outbreaks, even in …

Background The intensity, spread, and effects of public opinion about vaccines are growing
as new modes of communication speed up information sharing, contributing to vaccine …

On March 31, 2013, Chinese health officials notified the World Health Organization of three
cases of human infection with novel inf luenza A (H7N9). Since then, 132 people have been …