Innovation Watch: Google flu tracker

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2008-11-12 11:15:00 UTC
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Change.org's Danny forwarded me this link this morning, saying "it will be interesting when the web is ubiquitous enough to use collective intelligence for international outbreaks, local civil strife, etc."

Google Flu Trends tracks potential incidence of the flu by monitoring the geographic trends in searchs for "influenza." The idea is that people search for information about the sickness when they think they have it. This will give interested parties like the Center for Disease Control and Prevention a daily updated tool, improving the one to two week lag of existing trackers.

The potential for information aggregation for new forms of epidemiology is pretty amazing. Its the same principle behind conflict tracker Ushahidi. Are their other examples out there?

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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