Situational Awareness of Health Events Using Social Media and the SMART Dashboard

Abstract

We have developed a robust and flexible system to collect, process twitter messages and then display them on an interactive dashboard “SMART” that can potentially provide a tool for practitioners to monitor and visualize syndromes, specific diseases and other events of public health interest. We are seeking to make the SMART system and dashboard a useful tool that can provide timely and actionable information for local agencies and practitioners. To facilitate widespread use and testing of this system, we are seeking input and suggestions from public health and surveillance professionals.