With social media gaining traction since SARS (2003) and Avian H5N1 (2006), it will be interesting to see what role it might now play as a media tool in the current pandemic du jour.  The benefits of social media are clear, namely speed of communication, and monitoring sentiment.  The cost in accuracy is not insignficant, and it will be simply a matter of how to best use it.  Can new micro media services like twitter add anything useful? Will good information float well enough above the bad to make it worthwhile keeping track of?

I don’t think the question is whether people should, its a question of how they should. Twitter is just an open conversation tool, and people will use it to talk about issues important to them, and if swineflu/H1N1 does take hold, it will become one of those issues.

Access and distribute reliable information. Thankfully, several streams of information are available from official government and international agencies. (WHO -website & twitter CDC – Website, Twitter, Email).  The higher the official signal to unofficial noise, the better.  You could argue that it is often slower and more deliberate than other sources, but they have significant cost/benefit analyses to make with each official release.  Partially uncertain information is occasionally communicated, but only after due consideration.

Focus on facts and confirmed cases. Real numbers are much less than that reported in the media. If somebody publishes something without a link to either official or reliable press (eg. AFP) sources and you’re still interested, try looking for a pattern of multiple first hand accounts rather than a chain of retweets. Specifically with the current H1N1 Swineflu outbreak, “suspected” cases can be very misleading.  Once an “area” (eg. often a city) has a single laboratory confirmed case, everybody who presents to the emergency department, or general practitioner, with at least two of 1) runny nose or nasal congestion, 2) sore throat, 3) cough, 4) fever or feverishness gets labelled as a “suspected case”. This is all in the CDC case definition here.  You can imagine the number of patients with otherwise innocuous colds that come through like this everyday, let alone when the population is on heightened alert.

The next bit of information of interest to most people will be a change in the global pandemic alert phase which can be found here. For Australians, the federal government has a website up at http://www.flupandemic.gov.au/ with some information on pandemic preparedness with links to each state health departments. Its not the best, but at least its something local for both clinicians and the public.

The best source of CONFIRMED US cases are to be found here http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/

Below is an unofficial map from http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com/ of human cases of H1N1 infection.

Know of any good, reliable sources of information people might find useful?

What a Saturday.  I had the chance to sit in on some interesting sessions at the inaugral Trampoline Melbourne, an unconference organised by Pat Allen, Melina Chan, and Steve Hopkins.  It was held at Donkeywheel, Melbourne’s newest social change projects venue.  100 people from various disciplines came together to speak about their biggest ideas.  I heard some interesting talks on complexity theory, persuasion psychology, trust systems as alternative economies, biomimicry, advertising and mass-collaboration, and missed out on hearing some apparently interesting talks on Zen IT and permaculture, personal prototyping, amongst others.  The format of an unconference is simple.  People turn up and the session agenda evolves as people put their hand up to speak.

I had a chance to present on future health, and explored the way technolology and open, accessible, data will have significant impacts on health outcomes when applied to the social determinants of health, namely, education, information equity, income, empowerment, and looked briefly at the potential of rapid learning systems to improve clinical processes and aid in clinical decision support.

Slides from my talk are below (it probably doesn’t make much sense as slides were only visual cues, but links to interesting sites are on slide 99), and video of the presentation here.

There will be another Trampoline in the future, so keep your ears out.

Humour detour.  @provoost just pointed me towards a peek at a future of less labour intensive aged care.

“…..as the cleansing bubbling action kicked in, Toshiko Shibahara, 89, settled back to enjoy the wash and soak cycle of her nursing home’s new human washing machine.”

I think it’s pretty self explanatory.  I think the manufacturers may have taken inspiration from Barbarella