Hashtags for health

By: Andrea Small Carmona

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<h1>Hashtags for health</h1>
<h4>By: Andrea Small Carmona</h4>
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<p>The stream of <a href="https://www.scidev.net/communication/icts/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">information</a> released every day on social networks provides an enormous amount of real-time <a href="https://www.scidev.net/enterprise/data/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">data</a> that many organisations have been harnessing in order to gain insights into global and regional trends.<br />
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Today, researchers are digging into Twitter, looking at what users are saying about disease in order to monitor epidemics. Hashtags and trending topics can help data scientists understand the health issues people are experiencing in a certain area, making social media a useful tool for <a href="https://www.scidev.net/health/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">epidemiological</a> studies.</p>

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<p>This article was originally published on <a href="https://www.scidev.net" target="_blank">SciDev.Net</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.scidev.net/global/multimedia/hashtags-for-health/" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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The stream of information released every day on social networks provides an enormous amount of real-time data that many organisations have been harnessing in order to gain insights into global and regional trends.

Today, researchers are digging into Twitter, looking at what users are saying about disease in order to monitor epidemics. Hashtags and trending topics can help data scientists understand the health issues people are experiencing in a certain area, making social media a useful tool for epidemiological studies.