It has been quite interesting to follow the spread of the recent swine flu outbreak that started in Mexico in terms of media and information coverage.
Our world is now so connected by air, road and sea that outbreaks cross borders quickly, proving a real challenge for health agencies around the globe.
This morning while reading my local papers, I decided to jump online and find out what the world media was reporting on the outbreak. Without even thinking about it, my first port of call was Twitter. For those of you who don't know, Twitter is somewhat of a huge hit in the online world.
Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that enables users to send and read updates from other users. Known as Tweets, these updates, no more than 140 characters long allow for a very quick method of communication between users or followers as they are known on Twitter.
Logging into my Twitter account this morning I went straight to trending topics. This is a snapshot of the most frequent Tweets occurring at any given time. Not surprisingly Swine Flu was at the top of the list.
Some of the Tweets are quite amusing, many are just plain stupid (fear mongering) but there are plenty of Tweets providing links to some really interesting reports, articles and resources on the subject.
This got me to thinking about how useful a service like Twitter or other micro-blogging sites might be if the world is faced with a Pandemic event.
A few years back when Health organizations were monitoring the Bird Flu outbreaks, we were asked to document how our skills (assuming we could not go to work) might be utilized during a Pandemic event and also to identify if our offices could be utilized as make shift medical facilities.
As an IT professional, my skills in terms of offering any medical assistance were non-existent but I did state that I could maintain and update our departments health information via the website I managed at the time. Of course, in the event that we were restricted to our homes, gaining access to any Department website is extremely difficult so I noted that security and firewalls would need to be reviewed and changed.
This was well before Twitter and some of the other micro-blogging sites out there today.
Given how quickly you can setup an account on Twitter, I would now include this in my Emergency Preparedness Plan. You could quite easily establish several people within your health organisation with access to a Twitter account and get them to update followers on any current issues, events, concerns and recommendations. The fantastic thing about micro-blogging, especially Twitter is it's flexibility.
You can send and receive Tweets from your desktop computer, web based applications and your mobile phone.
Smart phones have really started to make many in the health industry consider how they might utilize these powerful devices in a medical setting. I wonder what applications and technologies will be built in the coming years that combine services like micro-blogging along with smart applications delivered right to our phones? It's pretty cool to think about what we might be using in the future to communicate with patients, clients and the community.
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