Monitoring Twitter content related to Influenza-like-Illness in Spanish-speaking populations

Influenza is a recurrent viral disease with potential to result in pandemics. Therefore it is necessary to have a timely, responsive and accurate detection. The use of Twitter as a source for data mining in biosurveillance has been previously shown useful, and it also has a potential for real-time visualization. However these efforts target messages in English, omitting from surveillance the part of users that speaks other languages, such as Spanish.

Objective

Identify the potential of Twitter as a source for monitoring and visualizing content regarding Influenza-like-Illness in Spanish-speaking populations for biosurveillance purposes.