Internet and Free Press Are Associated with Reduced Lags in Global Outbreak Reporting

Conclusion
The Internet’s ability to facilitate syndromic surveillance19 , communicate eyewitness accounts11, and provide unofficial reports that supplement traditional public health approaches to monitoring evolving events20,21 reveals a unique role the general population can play in outbreak risk reduction22. Health officials are quickly becoming aware of the value of publicly generated digital disease surveillance.
In places with regulated Internet and controlled press, there is the potential for misleading propaganda that obfuscates public reporting of emerging diseases. This interplay between the ability to communicate with new technology and the regulation of technology and information will almost certainly be dynamic, and Internet based surveillance efforts will need to adapt to changing social network platform preferences and fluctuations in government censorship of the various social network platforms. Careful attention should be paid to identify countries where the Internet could provide sufficient disinformation as to hinder reporting of emerging diseases.
The early stages of the MERS-CoV outbreak were first reported by ProMED-mail and the bioinformatics community is relying on digital surveillance to detect signals of H7N9 in the next influenza season22 . However, complete reliance on technology may be a dangerous pathway for disease detections and predictions, particularly if they are not reevaluated and adjusted as better data and improved techniques develop25...

Source: PLOS Currents Outbreaks - October 30, 2014 Category: Epidemiology Authors: lm12 Source Type: research