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ISDS Annual Conference Proceedings 2012. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
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ISDS 2012 Conference Abstracts

Development of a Vietnamese Language Outbreak
Mapping and Surveillance System
David Bui*1, 2, Sumiko Mekaru1, 3, Clark Freifeld1, 6 and John S. Brownstein1, 5, 4

1Children’s Hospital Informatics Program, Division of Emergency Medicine, Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston, MA, USA; 2Dept of
Epidemiology, Mel Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, Tucson, AZ, USA; 3Dept of Epidemiology, Boston University School of
Public Health, Boston, MA, USA; 4Dept of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; 5Dept of Epidemiology, Biostatistics
and Occupational Health, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada; 6Dept of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA,
USA

Objective
To present the development of a surveillance system utilizing on-

line Vietnamese language media sources to detect disease events in
Vietnam and the South East Asian Region.

Introduction
In the South East Asia Region (SEAR), infectious disease contin-

ues to be a leading cause of death. SEAR countries, like Vietnam, are
also at risk for outbreaks of emerging diseases due to high population
density, proximity to animals and deforestation.(1) Given Vietnam’s
location in SEAR and its recurrent outbreaks of zoonotic diseases—
timely surveillance in Vietnam is critical to global public health.(1)
Online news sources have been recognized as potential sources for
early detection of emerging disease outbreaks, as was the case with
SARS. (2) HealthMap, an innovative disease surveillance system de-
veloped at Boston Children’s Hospital, leverages the expediency of
online news media by using text-mining technology to monitor and
map global disease outbreaks reported by news sources.

Methods
HealthMap currently monitors disease related news in 15 lan-

guages. Building on HealthMap’s existing infrastructure, we trans-
lated the system’s existing disease and location name dictionaries to
corresponding Vietnamese terms to train the system to detect disease
and locations cited in Vietnamese news sources. To ensure compre-
hensive capture of disease terms, both formal disease names and col-
loquial synonyms were used. Vietnamese locations were sourced
through the official Vietnamese government website. Search queries
were developed using a variety of outbreak related terms like “bùng
phát” (outbreak) or “bênh” (disease), and specific disease names like
“Cúm gia câm” (Avian Influenza). Automated searches are performed
in the Vietnamese version of Google News.

Results
As of August 18, 2012, after 2 months in operation, the system has

mapped 433 alerts in 27 diseases reported in the Vietnamese media
compared to 7 diseases in English in the same time period. The col-
lected alerts were mapped to 699 province level and district level (or
lower) locations compared to only 16 in the English feed. To date,
the system collected 38 alerts of Avian Influenza from Vietnamese
sources compared to only 2 in English sources; 30 alerts of Dengue
compared to 7 in English; and 25 alerts of Hand Foot and Mouth com-
pared to 6. The system also collects outbreak case counts in Vietnam.
For example, counts of human Dengue cases in 97 locations in Viet-
nam were collected, providing a rich dataset for monitoring epidemic
spread and progression. The surveillance feed also received 2 reports
of outbreaks in crops. Zoonotic disease outbreaks in Vietnam were
more comprehensively covered in the Vietnamese feed compared to
English.

Conclusions
Leveraging the expediency of freely available online news media,

the developed surveillance system is able to detect and map outbreaks
occurring in Vietnam in near real-time, providing health organiza-
tions and researchers with timely and comprehensive coverage of dis-
ease events to assess pandemic risk and mobilize aid as necessary.

Screenshot of HealthMap Vietnamese Alerts

Keywords
Surveillance; Infectious Disease; Vietnam; HealthMap; Mapping

Acknowledgments

Sumiko Mekaru, John Brownstein, Clark Freifeld, Susan Aman, and the
whole HealthMap gang.

References

1. World Health Organization. Combating Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Searo.who.int. Available at: http://www.searo.who.int/LinkFiles/
Avian_Flu_combating_emerging_diseases.pdf. Accessed August 28,
2012.

2. J.S. Brownstein. Digital Disease Detection: Harnessing the Web for
Public Health Surveillance. N Engl J Med 2009; 360:2153-2157
Available at: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0900702.
Accessed April 16, 2012.

*David Bui
E-mail: davidbui@email.arizona.edu

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 5(1):e63, 2013