ABSTRACT
There are various ways to collect information on diseases, besides the gold standard of confirmed cases, including internet searches, purchases of items related to a disease, sick days at work or school, social media posts, news media, the moderated expert forum, and futures markets. All of these are indirect ways to obtain information about disease prevalence and this chapter covers several of these. In addition to tracking the disease spread, the social media platforms were also helpful “for connecting ground responders to each other.” Public health officials, physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and others often have informed opinions about the state of a disease and its future over the course of a few months. Prediction markets have been designed to extract and quantify this “crowd sourced” information. Prediction markets are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Iowa Electronic Markets has set up a prediction market regarding the spread of the influenza virus, commonly known as “the flu.”
