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Leveraging the 'Wisdom of the Crowd' as a BioSurveillance tool

Description

 

With the proliferation of social networks, the web has become a warehouse of patient discussions and reports, estimated at 10 billion records and growing at a rate of 40 percent per year. First Life Research, Ltd. (FLR), has searched and mapped thousands of these discussions and indexed hundreds of millions of reports (currently 960M) and is engaged in building web-based solutions that enable the public and public health practitioners to access massive health-related information and knowledge generated from the crowd.

Objective

With a large population sharing experiences regarding health issues and treatments online via social media platforms, generating novel data sets composed of massive unstructured user-generated content of health reports. This collective intelligence is referred to as the ‘Wisdom of the crowd’. This is a brief overview of data research engaging this unique statistical sample referred to as the ‘Crowd trial’ as an innovative element in health monitoring, enabling early detection and intervention by health professionals, regulators and pharmaceutical companies.

Submitted by elamb on