Winner of DHS's Hidden Signals challenge uses Twitter to predict biothreats

FedScoop: Beyond delivering the latest in headlines, cute animal videos and presidential firings, Twitter may play an important role in helping public health officials predict emerging biothreats.

That’s the contention of researcher John Brownstein, who led a team from the Computational Epidemiology Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital to victory in the Department of Homeland Security’s Hidden Signals Challenge, a Challenge.gov prize competition the department’s Science and Technology Directorate undertook in partnership with the Office of Health Affairs National Biosurveillance Integration Center.

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