Using these initial conditions, the investigators incorporated Twitter into the model."This kind of integration has never been done before," Vespignani said. "We were not looking for the number of people who were sick because Twitter will not tell you that. What we wanted to know was: Do we have more flu at this point in time in Texas or in New Jersey, in Seattle or in San Francisco? Twitter, which includes GPS locations, is a proxy for that. This is not a challenge in the sense that you want to win.
Miserable Flu Sufferers' Tweets Help Researchers Track the Viruses in Real Time
Flu season is just about over in the United States, and while some people were suffering, researchers at Northeastern University were using social media to track the virus in real time. "The evolution of epidemics can be quite different season by season," Zhang said. Why it matters to you By predicting how the flu will spread, public health agencies can better prepare for — and even prevent — epidemics. Unfortunately, the current surveillance data lag behind flu activities."With their new platform, Zhang and his colleagues looked to develop models that could help public health agencies better understand and predict how epidemics evolve. The Northeastern team created their model in response to the "Predict Influenza Season Challenge" raised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in November 2013.collected by :Lucy William
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