Twitter becomes a tool for tracking flu epidemics and other public health issues

Twitter users send around 500 million tweets a day, an endless fire hose of information about how people feel, what they’re doing, what they know and where they are.

For epidemiologists and public health officials, it’s a potential gold mine of data, a possible way to track where disease is breaking out and how it spreads, as well as how best to help — but only if they can figure out how to find the useful signal amid all that noise.

(From The Washington Post)

http://wapo.st/14lKfTk