Can twitter be Twitter be used to track illnesses? Possibly. Illnesses usually hit in waves. Think of your kids’

preschool class or your office when a cold hits.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response is trying to track these illness breakouts and they’re using a challenge to make it happen.

Diana Boss is the public health analyst at ASPR who’s managing the Health in My Community challenge. She told Chris Dorobek on the DorobekINSIDER program how it works.

Twitter tracks diseases by cdorobek

So what do you think…Should Twitter be harnessed to track diseases? Is it possible?

Here’s the Contest Rules:

• Leverage open source Twitter data to find illnesses being discussed
• Select a geographic area of interest
• Generate a daily list of top 5 trending illnesses for state and local health departments

Learn more about the complete rules and judging criteria.

To listen to Diana’s full interview you can catch the full radio show at GovLoop Insights or your can subscribe to our itunes channel.