Software Flagged Ebola Outbreak Before Official Alerts

That's exactly what HealthMap is trying to do. It was introduced in 2006 by two researchers at Boston Children's Hospital: John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics, and Clark Freifeld, a software developer who is now studying for his PhD in biomedical engineering at Boston University. The software tool they built collects data from the Internet in real time, looking at a wide variety of sources, including Twitter feeds, local newspaper articles, eyewitness reports as well as official data from governments and organizations like the WHO and then plots pertinent information on an interactive map. "We use natural language processing, machine learning, and cluster detection to represent a global view of epidemics," explains Brownstein. "As these sources build up, they bring together a picture of a serious situation for us. Our analysts work to synthesize and we disseminate the information via various channels."