A good way to visualize global disease hot zones is to look at them, as they are unfolding on a map. In 2006, a team of computer research scientists at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School created HealthMap – an automated, real-time program to collect and integrate infectious disease outbreak data. The researchers then took the information and built a digital map of the planet, utilizing colors and dots to help people locate outbreaks. The map is free. Visitors can click on the dots to get specific information about each disease alert.
The program uses a custom-build algorithm to comb through Internet search engines, news reports, social media, international health organization websites, government websites, infectious disease expert alerts, and even personal blogs of health care workers. A team of people at Boston Children’s Hospital continue to keep the algorithm up-to-date.
In 2014, the site reported on a “mystery hemorrhagic fever” in West Africa, nine days before the World Health Organization announced there was an Ebola outbreak, demonstrating the site’s usefulness as a public disease surveillance network. HealthMap’s team collaborates closely with the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED-mail), a curated Internet-based reporting tool administered by the International Society for Infectious Diseases. The Brookline, Mass.-based ISID represent infectious disease practitioners. HealthMap is funded and supported by companies, like Google and Merck, foundations and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.