Epidemiological Algorithm Scans Your Tweets, Can Predict You'll Get The Flu Next Week
In a crowded urban area like New York City, it's impossible to keep your distance from people who may be sick. If you've left your apartment--and maybe even if you haven't--there's a decent chance you've been around someone who is under the weather and there's really no way you could know it. A team at the University of Rochester wanted to find a way to change that. If you knew you'd been in proximity of someone showing flu symptoms, would you take preventative measures? Could flu outbreaks be contained through better information? The team began mining geo-tagged Twitter data from New Yorkers and the results are pretty astounding--the team found it could foresee when an individual is about to come down to the flu some eight days before that person began to show symptoms. Related ArticlesIn Fast-Tracked Trial, Nanopatch Flu Vaccine Found EffectiveBy the Numbers: Flu Season, VisualizedGovernments React To Flu OutbreakTagsScience,...