Role of Online Data from Search Engine and Social Media in Healthcare Informatics

Search engines and social media are two different online data sources where search engines can provide health related queries logs and Internet users' discuss their diseases, symptoms, causes, preventions and even suggest treatment by sharing their views, experiences and opinions on social media. This chapter hypothesizes that online data from Google and Twitter can provide vital first-hand healthcare information. An approach is provided for collecting twitter data by exploring contextual information gleaned from Google search queries logs. Furthermore, it is investigated that whether it is possible to use tweets to track, monitor and predict diseases, especially Influenza epidemics. Obtained results show that healthcare institutes and professional's uses social media to provide up-to date health related information and interact with public. Moreover, proposed approach is beneficial for extracting useful information regarding disease symptoms, side effects, medications and to track geographical location of epidemics affected area.