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AI Watches Social Media for Disease Outbreaks
29 Nov
Summary
- NCDC plans to use social media posts to enhance disease prediction.
- AI systems have already increased disease detection capacity by 150%.
- Future models will integrate AI, climate, and population data.
The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) is enhancing its public health security by considering the integration of social media posts into its predictive models. This strategic move aims to improve the surveillance and early detection of disease patterns and potential outbreaks, building on the success of existing AI-based event surveillance systems.
The NCDC's current AI systems, including a Media Scanning and Verification Cell, process millions of online news reports daily in multiple Indian languages. These systems have already demonstrated a 150% increase in detection capacity over manual methods and a significant reduction in workload for surveillance teams. The agency is also facilitating citizen reporting to flag disease incidence spikes.
Looking ahead, the NCDC plans to develop a comprehensive predictive model by integrating AI surveillance, laboratory intelligence, climatic data, population movement patterns, and digital diagnostics. This proactive approach is designed to anticipate outbreak trajectories, enabling health authorities to detect early warning signals before clinical manifestation and mobilize resources effectively to prevent large-scale disease outbreaks.
