title: An overview of internet biosurveillance.
abstract: Internet biosurveillance utilizes unstructured data from diverse web-based sources to provide early warning and situational awareness of public health threats. The scope of source coverage ranges from local media in the vernacular to international media in widely read languages. Internet biosurveillance is a timely modality that is available to government and public health officials, healthcare workers, and the public and private sector, serving as a real-time complementary approach to traditional indicator-based public health disease surveillance methods. Internet biosurveillance also supports the broader activity of epidemic intelligence. This overview covers the current state of the field of Internet biosurveillance, and provides a perspective on the future of the field.
authors.affiliation: Imaging Science and Information Systems Center, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC, USA; Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA.
authors.forename: D M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Hartley
authors.forename: N P
authors.initials: NP
authors.lastname: Nelson
authors.forename: R R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Arthur
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Barboza
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Collier
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Lightfoot
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Linge
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: van der Goot
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mawudeku
authors.forename: L C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Madoff
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Vaillant
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Walters
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yangarber
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mantero
authors.forename: C D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Corley
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Brownstein
mesh_terms: D055877:Biosurveillance / Q000379:methods*; D062665:Epidemiological Monitoring; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet
keywords: Digital disease detection; Internet-based surveillance; digital epidemiology; electronic surveillance; epidemic intelligence; event-based surveillance; participatory epidemiology; web-based text mining