Twitter Can Help Health Officials Track Outbreaks

Sharing your health woes on social media can be beneficial for tracking disease outbreaks, a new study says.

Researchers at Brigham Young University found that Twitter's speed and volume can help health officials use the site as an early-warning system to monitor diseases.

Tweets with location information may allow officials to plot points on a map to detect a trend, then alert providers to gear up for a possible outbreak. Though accurate information is available for only about 15% of tweets containing GPS data, it's enough for a system to monitor key words like "fever" or "coughing" in a specific area. Check out the video, above, for more.

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