HealthMap opens door for students to discover epidemiology

20Jul08

HealthMap, dubbed as the ‘global disease alert map’, links news regarding disease outbreaks from around the world into a searchable Google Map interface. The service recently detected the salmonella outbreak in the U.S., which had sickened over 1,000 people, long before the Centre for Disease Control announced that it was happening.

HealthMap integrates outbreak data of varying reliability, ranging from news sources (such as Google News) to curated personal accounts (such as ProMED) to validated official alerts (such as World Health Organization). Through an automated text processing system, the data is aggregated by disease and displayed by location for user-friendly access to the original alert.’(HealthMap)

The amount of ‘real-world’ data currently available on the Internet, wrapped in easy to access user friendly interfaces, is creating a boon for science teachers looking to inject greater degrees of relevance into their classrooms.