'Missed 1500m coz feeling peeky; can't seem to keep anything down today."
'Missed 1500m coz feeling peeky; can't seem to keep anything down today."
"Me too. Don't know if it was beer or kebab I had last night, but it ain't pretty."
Could tweets such as these alert scientists to food poisoning clusters or outbreaks of norovirus during the Commonwealth Games?
Epidemiologists at Health Protection Scotland (HPS) hope so and are to monitor Twitter during the Games in a bid to have early warning of illnesses that could spread among the crowds. Surveillance teams are to search the social media site every hour during the Games using words such as "sick" to see if they can spot several people reporting similar symptoms and will then try to identify the location from which the tweets are coming so that they can alert the relevant health board to a potential problem.
The notion of any official monitoring social media sites may seem a bit Big Brother, but Twitter users are aware that their tweets are public, unless they set them to be seen only by followers, and therefore capable of being searched by anyone.
Whether the system will work or not remains to be seen (HPS is making no grandiose claims for it at this stage) but it is certainly worth trying. While there is a chance of serious infections such as the Ebola virus being brought to Scotland from countries such as Sierra Leone, the most likely diseases to be seen are norovirus (winter vomiting bug) and flu. These illnesses are associated with the winter months and it is winter in the southern hemisphere, where many competitors will be coming from. Meanwhile, food poisoning originating from a particular food van or other catering facility serving the masses could also potentially affect many people. The earlier the authorities know of such problems, the better able they will be to deal with them.
The surveillance team will have to be able to filter out false leads. After all, it is within the bounds of possibility that some people attending the Games will end up in bed with a sore head and ropey tummy for self-inflicted reasons. "But I didn't have that much to drink last night; must be food poisoning," is a common enough refrain from self-deluded revellers.
Monitoring Twitter would not be the most reliable method of detecting problems on its own, but it is only one way in which epidemiologists will keep tabs on public health. GPs and A&E departments will be required to provide information about cases of infection or food poisoning, while NHS 24 will also look out for trends, not just from calls it receives, but also from monitoring the searches members of the public perform on its website. Taken together, all of this information should mean that medical services would be able to gear up for action and warn the public how to avoid infection early on in an outbreak.
In truth, higher attendances at GP surgeries and hospitals during the Games are most likely to result from routine medical events such as broken bones, but it is reassuring to know that this novel use of Twitter could help identify infections before they spoil the fun for many sports fans.
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