Free or low-cost sources of unstructured information, such as Internet news and online discussion sites, provide detailed local and near real-time data on disease outbreaks, even in countries that lack traditional public health surveillance. To improve public health surveillance and, ultimately, interventions, we examined 3 primary systems that process event-based outbreak information: Global Public Health Intelligence Network, HealthMap, and EpiSPIDER. Despite similarities among them, these systems are highly complementary because they monitor different data types, rely on varying levels of automation and human analysis, and distribute distinct information. Future development should focus on linking these systems more closely to public health practitioners in the field and establishing collaborative networks for alert verification and dissemination. Such development would further establish event-based monitoring as an invaluable public health resource that provides critical context and an alternative to traditional indicator-based outbreak reporting.
Check out some of the new apps over at Chartbeat. Very cool real-time analytics with alerts. I wonder when Woopra when announce something similar?
When will Google Analytics become real-time and provide alerts for its millions of users?
Hat off to the chaps over at Chartbeat - beating them to the game! Well done.
I got an update on the Oracle Business Rules product recently. Oracle is an interesting company - they have the components of decision management but do not yet have them under a single umbrella. For instance, they have in-database data mining (blogged about here), the Real Time Decisions (RTD) engine, event processing rules and so on. Anyway, this update was on business rules.
Fundamentally, Web 3.0 is about using semantic technology to derive meaning from the vast accumulation of textual information out there on the Web and do something useful with it. If you want a slightly deeper dive on Web 3.0 then read What is Web 3.0 and Why Should I Care? but fundamentally it’s about semantic technology.
Pysdex uses such technology to parse information in real time for meaning, aggregating it and filtering it, and delivering it to various streamed services that it offers to its customers. The diagram below illustrates that process.
R. Bruckner, B. List, and J. Schiefer. DaWaK 2000: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery, page 317--326. London, UK, Springer-Verlag, (2002)