Word: veratect
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...Google think that's too long. Google Flu Trends claims it can pick up signs of health troubles up to two weeks ahead of official health reports, giving communities precious time to protect themselves and hopefully contain the spread of an infectious disease like influenza. Another surveillance company, Veratect, based in Kirkland, Wash., says it picked up the first signs of H1N1 in La Gloria, in Veracruz state, Mexico, as early as April 6, when it received reports of a "strange" respiratory illness there - some 18 days before the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the rest...
...Veratect's tracking method includes analyzing Internet data (blogs and other sources), maintaining on-the-ground contact with health officials, text-mining news reports and government resources for keywords related to infectious-disease outbreaks and using satellite images of weather patterns to detect and predict the progress of global events like disease and civil unrest. Veratect sources first picked up reports of human respiratory disease at a pig farm in Mexico on April 6; additional reports of a similar illness surfaced on April 16, which is when the company got concerned enough to e-mail officials...
...system detects something that changes the fabric of everyday life, such as strains in the medical infrastructure or changes in the behavioral patterns of people if they aren't going to work or attending school," says Robert Hart, CEO of Veratect. Trained analysts then investigate suspicious reports to determine if additional investigations are needed or alarm bells should be raised. Veratect follows more than 200 diseases around the world in this way, and argues that its system of computer detection and human interpretation can give health officials enough of an early warning of potential disease outbreaks to ready the appropriate...
Compared with Veratect, Google Flu Trends' metric is somewhat simpler. From 50 million potential search topics, Google engineers narrow down a relevant grouping of flu-related search terms, which they track each fall at the start of the annual flu season. When analyzed side by side with CDC records of confirmed flu cases for the past five flu seasons, Google Flu Trends was 97% to 98% accurate in tracking the disease. And because Google's analysis is in real time, its estimates of cases come about a week or two before those of the CDC. "Each flu season...
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