Individual behaviors, patterns may predict disease outbreaks before international agencies

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Marsha Hunt---The ordinary person may be part of the prediction of a disease outbreak even before the Centers for Disease Control or the World Health Organization.  Is it because you and I have special powers or is it some other reason?

What happens when you have a series of symptoms?  Like most people you turn to the Internet for answers.  You do a search for those symptoms in clusters.  Many of you use Google, one of the more popular search engines.

Then other people with similar symptoms do the same thing as you are doing.  Sometimes the searches cluster in a single location, then begin to spread to other places.  Sometimes they occur simultaneously in a number of places.

This hints at the power of the individual.  For when a number of people added together have similar symptoms and begin searching for answers this may be a signal of a major disease similarity or an outbreak.

So the prediction comes from the human behavior.  This often happens before official organizations do their surveillance, their due diligence in looking for answers as well.  They get reports of people expressing symptoms, and then they too search for answers, examining patterns throughout the world, contacting agencies, reaffirming their own findings.

So the patterns that the major organizations find may bring conclusions that people determine individually as well, making a prediction of sorts that can actually be found by analyzing search results.

These are the conclusions Kurzweil finds.  It is an interesting concept.

And what is particularly valuable is the notion that Internet behavior has the ability to bring good in the world, to bring analysis, facts that can lead to determination of disease patterns, and similarly patterns, and scientists examining them, can lead to results and treatment approaches.

All from the beginnings that may begin with you, trying to find answers to symptoms you have, joined with others like you, and making a difference in worldwide health.