Abstract
It is critical to understand to understand the attitudes and perceptions amongst public health leaders regarding the use of digital disease data to improve situational awareness. A survey of such leaders showed that this novel content had the most value in the first stage of situational awareness for identifying early indications of disease outbreaks. News media and Internet search were moderate to highly valuable for 70% of respondents, while social media was moderately to highly valuable to 60% of respondents. For both strengthening the comprehension of an outbreak and informing future predictions, beliefs were split regarding the potential value (if any) that exists.