Can Facebook searches prevent disease in New Zealand?
The Government is looking at monitoring everything from peoples’ Facebook accounts, to tissue consumption and sick leave, to track the spread of disease and head off developing epidemics.
So complaining about those winter ills on Facebook? Bulk purchasing Vicks Vapodrops or taking a day off work? The Government may be watching.
Health Minister Jonathan Coleman says this method could provide vital information to keep most Kiwis well.
The Health Ministry is working on a new project to see if tracking these unconventional data sets may actually prove useful in predicting outbreaks and improve the response of health officials to epidemics.
‘‘We’re in the midst of the cold and flu season, so trying to predict outbreaks of infectious bugs is top of mind,’’ he said.
‘‘The project uses alternative sources of information to detect trends that indicate the spread of infectious diseases, including social media.
‘‘People often talk about being unwell on social media, so trends can be detected on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Picking up on trends could help us to put the appropriate measures in place earlier to prevent disease spread, and ensure sufficient stocks of medicines.’’
From parents posting online that they’re home looking after sick children, to an overshare about a stomach bug and wading through a sea of tissues to get off the couch – it could all be helpful.
The ministry would harness a wide range of data for the project; from anonymised information about school absenteeism, employee sick leave, pharmacy sales of over-the-counter drugs, Healthline calls and tissue sales.
Dr Caroline McElnay, the ministry’s director of public health, said the study would use retrospective sets of data – a few years old – to see whether it would have provided useful information to prevent past outbreaks.
‘‘Often when we see any outbreak, we get comments from the public that ‘you could have been on to that earlier’ or ‘what if you’d had access to over-the-counter medicines information’. So it’s responding to some of those comments and taking it to the next stage,’’ she said.
The project is one of a number being funded by the $888 million extra invested into Vote Health at the May Budget. McElnay said the ministry hoped to make a decision on using the unconventional data in its normal surveillance later this year.