Natural Language Processing (NLP) is used to extract relevant information from unstructured data sources, such as social media posts, news articles, and medical records. By analyzing this data, epidemiologists can monitor disease outbreaks in real time and identify emerging health threats. For example, NLP algorithms can scan social media for mentions of symptoms related to a particular disease, providing early warning signals of an outbreak. This real-time surveillance is invaluable for public health officials in making timely decisions.
