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HealthMap Tracks Outbreaks With Google Maps

by Terrence O'Brien on July 11, 2008 at 11:02 AM

HealthMap Tracks Outbreaks with Google Maps

There are plenty of tools out there to track disease and infections, but only HealthMap.Org uses Google Maps to give you a frightening visual of outbreaks around the world.

The service uses a complex algorithm that searches Google News, World Health Organization alerts and other online news and discussion groups for reports of outbreaks. The algorithm is able to distinguish between articles about cases of illness and reports of vaccine availabilities or other general health alerts by parsing the language used by reporters. It is even able to detect and filter out duplicate reports of the same outbreak from multiple news sources. The reports are then listed as points on a map grouped by either country and state or province.

Though the site is aimed at health professionals, the information is freely available to the public. So tracking the latest outbreak of salmonella-tainted tomatoes should be much easier. [Source: ABC News]

Tags: disease, google maps, GoogleMaps, health, health map, HealthMap, outbreak, web, web apps, WebApps

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