abstract: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.Brownstein JS, Freifeld CC, Reis BY, Mandl KD (2008) Surveillance Sans Frontières: Internet-Based Emerging Infectious Disease Intelligence and the HealthMap Project.
Certainly, opening HealthMap to user-based reportscould introduce an element ofchaos, and evenoutright panic, into diseasesurveillance - ordinary peoplearen'ttrainedepidemiologists.
For instance, what if pharmaceutical companies, following a HealthMap or Ushahidi model, tracked on an open platform if and how a mapped health crisis was met with an intended drug response?