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#swineflu: twitter-based early warning and risk communication of the swine flu pandemic in

2009

Patty KostkovaCity University, London

Healthcare in 21st century: mobile17% of cell phone users have

used their phone to look up health information

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Media coverage

Over 3 million tweets were

collected during May 2009 to March 2010 containing the word

flu by CeRC pilot study

Categorisation of Links

Category Total Authors Total ResourcesBlog 7573 162

News 6151 117

Medical Organisation 4388 38

Spam 4231 312

Video 3897 72

Poll 741 5

Comic 484 8

Aggregator 318 10

Game 294 4

Sales 288 31

Download 248 8

Campaign 63 1

Suspended account 5 1

“I have swine flu”12,954

“I have the flu”12,651

Self Reporting Flu

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 520

500

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USUK

Week

Tota

l Tw

eets

Evaluation – UK data (RCGP)

20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 520

200

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0

50

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UKUK ILI

Week

Tota

l Tw

eets

Clinic

al R

ate

per

100 0

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Media and twitter: who was influencing whom during swine flu pandemics 2009?

11th June 2009

Hour-by-Hour breakdown of the most popular resources posted to Twitter

Media Coverage

Invited Speaker – “Idea Champion” at BMJ Panel: ◦ "The idea most likely to make the biggest impact on healthcare by 2020" (the

NHS Innovation Expo 2011, Excel, London, March 2011)

◦ ECDC Invited Speaker European meeting on “Epidemic Intelligence” (Stockholm, October 2010)

BMJ feature ◦ Can Twitter predict disease outbreaks?

◦ BMJ 2012; 344 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e2353 (Published 17 May 2012

Media Coverage

◦ “Epidemic Inteligence”Scientific Film

◦ BMJ: Medical Innovation: Sabreena Malik

◦ Social networking sites can help prevent pandemics:

(AFP) (15th December 2010) and replicated across more than

30 online news outlets 13

“Patty Kostkova and her colleagues at City ehealth Research Centre, City University, London, showed that the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak could have been identified on Twitter one week before it emerged in official records from general practitioner reports

“E-Bug uses interactive games to teach children about infection control”

Thanks to Martin Szomszor & Connie St Louis

Patty KostkovaGawesh JawaheerGayo DialloSue WisemanDavid FarrellSteve D’SouzaGemma MadleJane Mani-SaadaAnjana RoyJulius WeinbergMike CatchpoleFaiza HansrajNancy LaiSandy BeverageJohn LawrensonMartin SzomszorLisa LazareckDasun WeerasingheRos NyugiChristina DalyEd de QuinceyHelen Oliver David FowlerSimon Hammond Andreea Molnar 14