Health Research Through Twitter

Two computer scientists from Johns Hopkins University, the United States conduct health research through Twitter. They observed 1.5 million health-related tweets from May 2009 until October 2010, to determine the range of diseases and how people cope.

Looked in research, not a few people choose the wrong drug for the pain they suffered. "A lot of tweets that prove that there has been a serious misperception out there," says PhD student Michael J. Paul one of the researchers.

"Some people send a tweet that they take antibiotics to treat the flu," said Paul. "Though not suitable antibiotics for the flu, which actually is a virus, and errors such as these play a role in creating the problem of antibiotic immunity."

The researchers used a computer program designed specifically for select health-related tweet among billions of tweets during the study period. The program is also able to separate the phrases that are not related to health, despite containing the word commonly used in the context of health.

Than 20,000 health-related tweets, obtained information that allows researchers to identify the origin of the disease. The data allows researchers to identify health trends in a country, especially the U.S.. "We observe, allergy season starts earlier in the warmer states," said Professor Mark Dredze who chaired the study.

Even so the two scientists realized that the health information obtained from Twitter has its limitations. It often happens, Twitter users do not "announce" a disease they suffered. "We were only able to examine from what people want to and we think there are restrictions related to what people are willing to share on Twitter," said Paul.

Posted in: Techno