Disease surveillance using online news: an extended study of dengue fever in India

• Published in: Tropical Medicine and Health
• Main Authors: Yiding Zhang, Motomu Ibaraki, Franklin W. Schwartz
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2019
• Subjects: Disease surveillance; Newspaper; Text mining; Dengue fever; India; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Arctic; Indian
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41182-019-0189-y; https://doaj.org/article/b4b5b77c2b96426498538874a216fd97

Abstract Background The study demonstrates the potential in using newspaper information as a proxy for monitoring dengue fever outbreaks in India. Online newspapers are being considered as sources of information on disease surveillance, early outbreak detection, and epidemiology research. Our objective is to understand the complex dengue epidemiology and discover inter-relationships between dengue fever and local social-environmental factors by mining information from local Indian news articles. Results We search and extract articles from the newspaper database, LexisNexis. News articles related to dengue fever in India are analyzed together with local environmental, climate, and population data in both temporally and spatially to study disease epidemiology. We also examine the influence of newsworthiness for constructing a disease surveillance system. In terms of temporal aspects, dengue outbreaks follow consistent patterns every year. However, for many areas, this application is frustrated by the relatively small numbers of news articles. Conclusions The study has advanced capabilities in producing approaches that provide for richer interpretations of textual information provided in newspaper articles. Such approaches appear particularly well suited for developing countries with relatively poor medical infrastructures and records.