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Social media represents a new frontier in disease surveillance. Infoveillance allows for the real-time retrieval of internet data. Our objective was to systematically review the literature utilizing social media as a source for disease prediction and surveillance. A review of English-language conference proceedings and journal articles from 1999 to 2011 using EMBASE and PubMed was conducted. A total of 12 full-text articles were included. Results of these studies show the use of open-source micro-blogging sites to inform influenza-like-illness monitoring. These results inform recommendations for future research directions.

Why data resource profiles (DRPs)? We can't do epidemiology without data. Data are cen- tral to epidemiology's three main challenges: to describe health states in populations, make inferences about their causes and to apply that knowledge to improve health. The more high quality data we have to support these three tasks, the better.10,11 The challenge of providing health data coverage on a global scale is immense. Termed a 'scandal of invisi- bility', in the world's least developed countries more than two-thirds of all births and deaths go unregis- tered.12 Meanwhile, in advanced industrialised na- tions publicly funded data collection systems are under threat, particularly at a time of state retrench- ment.13 In the UK and Canada the long-form census was cancelled. Canada, too, cancelled some of its premier longitudinal studies of children and youth, leaving the country with little signal about the state of human capability development of its future gener- ations. Removing parts of the publicly funded health information infrastructure is easy, but rebuilding sur- veillance will require orders of magnitude more vision, dedication and money.