Health News

The Internet is revolutionizing infectious disease surveillance, providing timely, low-cost online resources for public health officials to detect disease outbreaks. An analysis in CMAJ of web-based disease surveillance of the recent Listeriosis outbreak in Canada demonstrates there may have been an early signal of the outbreak on the Internet prior to the official announcement click here for further information.

Rapidly identifying an infectious disease outbreak is crucial to reduce the spread of disease and to alert the public and neighbouring regions. Information sources, such as chat rooms, search terms, blogs, news feeds and other real-time sources are often capable of detecting the first evidence of outbreaks.

Many countries lack the public health infrastructure to identify outbreaks in the early stages and there may be economic reasons for countries to not fully disclose infectious outbreaks. Online tools can help overcome some of these obstacles.

"Because web-based data sources exist outside traditional reporting channels, they are invaluable to public health agencies that depend on timely information flow across national and sub-national borders," write Dr…