Google targets infectious diseases

March 16, 2008

Google’s non-profit arms seems to be joining the Gates Foundation in taking up arms against infectious diseases. Their Predict and Prevent program plans to use information and technology to “empower communities to predict and prevent emerging threats before they become local, regional, or global crises.” Current focus is on

Hot spot identification: The goal here is to use data to understand the drivers that can help communities identify surprises. This will require a lot of information sharing.
Enable rapid response: This is the part I find fascinating. How can we use data and act on it? How do we empower communities to self-organize?

Currently Google.org is looking to partner with people working on

Collection of specimens at the human/animal interface to identify and map hot spots
Innovative, event-based surveillance at the community level in the developing world
Integrated vulnerability mapping to the drivers of emerging infectious diseases

Those are all fascinating areas and would be interesting to see whom they end up working one. One problem I have seen with the tech community when it comes to health and science is an emphasis on the cool without thinking through some of the more fundamental issues.

Further reading:
Using the Semantic Web and social networks to track disease

Technorati Tags: Google.org, Infectious Diseases