New tool to help detect public health threats

person typing on laptop image

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has launched a new version of epitweetr, its free, open source interactive tool, to help with the early detection of public health threats using Twitter data.
    The tool allows users to automatically monitor trends of tweets by time, place, and topic, with the aim of detecting public health threats early through signals such as an unusual increase in the number of tweets. It is designed to support public health experts with the early detection of threats from infectious diseases but can be extended to all hazards and other fields of study by modifying the topics and keywords.