infodemiology

Infodemiology was defined by Gunther Eysenbach in the early 2000s as information epidemiology. It is an area of science research focused on scanning the internet for user-contributed health-related content, with the ultimate goal of improving public health. Later, it is also defined as the science of mitigating public health problems resulting from an infodemic.

==Origin of term== Eysenbach first used the term in the context of measuring and predicting the quality of health information on the Web (i.e., measuring the "supply" side of information). He later included in his definition methods and techniques which are designed to automatically measure and track health information "demand" (e.g., by analyzing search queries) as well as "supply" (e.g., by analyzing postings on webpages, in blogs, and news articles, for example through GPHIN) on the Internet with the overarching goal of informing public health policy and practice. In 2013, the Infovigil Project was launched in an effort to bring the research community together to help realize this goal. It is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.