Utilising Data From Social Media In Modelling Vector-Borne Diseases

Abstract

Robust decision-making models in healthcare for service delivery evaluation and ground situation monitoring rely on electronic healthcare records. In the absence of such data in the Indian healthcare domain, decision-making models rely on retrospective data collected through structured data collection mechanisms as a part of standard operating procedures designed for monitoring and evaluation. However, studies indicate that the use of social media can improve reporting. But this data is unstructured and requires validation. However, increasing social media adoption has enabled citizen-centric reporting of daily events in real-time. While this has enabled the service industry to achieve better customer satisfaction, there is scope for greater adoption in healthcare. The current pandemic has highlighted the significance of such real-time data by facilitating contact tracing and identifying hotspots. The enablement of end-users has ensured improved impact and outreach of the desired objectives. The paper proposes a high-level conceptual model of the use of social media in the conventional models by establishing a relationship between social media content and actual ground data collected by field healthcare workers.