Global disease surveillance using social media: HIV/AIDS content intervention in web forums

Collecting potential data sources for use in proactively analyzing and evaluating strategies for syndromic surveillance and bio-defense have become critical issues in and challenges to infectious disease informatics [1]. Web forums link highly relevant information about patients´ needs, disease pain, health conditions, and concerns for medical practice [2]. Health departments or medical service groups can use the information in the forums to identify disease sources and scope and to detect outbreaks while the possibility for intervention remains.