Developing a Social Media System for Biosurveillance

The National Biosurveillance Integration Center's (NBIC) innovation project on Social Media Analysis seeks to demonstrate the viability of extracting relevant, health information from social media data, with the ultimate goal to establish an operational social media system for biological event surveillance. Application of this data to the biosurveillance problem is yet largely unexplored. Initial analysis shows promising capacity for health information within social media. Significant investment and future effort is required in the areas of algorithm, system architecture, and CONOPS development to enact an operational social media system for biosurveillance.