Detecting social signals of flu symptoms

Abstract

A cold and the flu are both respiratory illnesses and they are very common to us. Vaccination is the most effective way to prevent infection of the flu, but there is no way for a cold. Thus, the best strategy for individuals is to stay away from the flu or cold carriers and to wash their hands often. Early detection of flu epidemics and a quick response to that can minimize the impact of the flu. We observed tweets as social signals of flu symptoms to detect the flu epidemics in early stage. We compared a tweet corpus from nine cities in Korea to the weather factors, flu forecast, and Influenza-like Illness datasets. The results show the possibility of using social signals to detect epidemic diseases.