HealthMap is a freely accessible, automated electronic information system for monitoring, organizing, and visualizing reports of global disease outbreaks according to geography, time, and infectious disease agent. In operation since September 2006, and created by John Brownstein, PhD and Clark Freifeld, MS, HealthMap acquires data from a variety of freely available electronic media sources (e.g. ProMED-mail

ProMED-mail

The Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases is among the largest of publicly available emerging disease and outbreak reporting systems in the world....

, Eurosurveillance

Eurosurveillance

Eurosurveillance is an independent European scientific journal devoted to the epidemiology, surveillance, prevention and control of communicable diseases.Eurosurveillance is an open-access journal, free of charge both for readers and authors...

, Wildlife Disease Information Nodehttp://wildlifedisease.nbii.gov/) to obtain a comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases.

Users of HealthMap come from a variety of organizations including state and local public health agencies, the World Health Organization

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...

 (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Druid Hills, unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta...

, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is an independent agency of the European Union aimed at strengthening Europe's defences against infectious diseases. It was established in 2005 and is located in Solna, Sweden....

. HealthMap is used both as an early detection system and supports situational awareness by providing current, highly local information about outbreaks, even from areas relatively invisible to traditional global public health efforts. Currently, HealthMap monitors information sources in English, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, French, Portuguese, and Arabic.

External links

• The HealthMap website
• Boston Children's Hospital Informatics Program http://www.chip.org/
• Google.org Predict and Prevent Grants and Investments http://www.google.org/projects.html