Report: Kyoto University School of Public Health International Lecture: Infodemiology: The Emergence of an Interdisciplinary Field Intersecting Public Health, Data Science, and Policy

In the afternoon of July 24, 2023, an international lecture on Infodemiology was held at the School of Public Health, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University (KUSPH). About 20 students and faculty members from KUSPH participated in this international lecture, which was held in a hybrid format, on-site and via ZOOM. Prof. Timothy Mackey, a professor of the Global Health Program, University of California San Diego was invited as a guest speaker. He is also the Director of the Global Health Policy and Data Institute. The purpose of this international lecture was to introduce the new concept of infodemiology to the students and faculty members of KUSPH.

First, Prof. Mackey explained to us what is infodemiology. The basic definition of infodemiology is “the science of distribution and determinants of information in an electronic medium, or in a population, with the aim to inform public health and public policy”. He also made distinction with the similar concepts of infoveillance, which is a longitudinal tracking of infodemiology metrics for surveillance and trend analysis. Prof. Mackey emphasized the importance and benefits of infodemiology and infoveillance that, when used effectively and systematically, the publicly available information from internet-based social media in detecting emerging issues, as well as exploring changing attitude and behaviors of the general public.

Next, Prof. Mackey introduced various research he had recently conducted on the topics of COVID-19, vaccine hesitancy, and hikikomori (severe social withdrawal), using the methodologies of infodemiology to address the phenomenon of infodemics.

From this lecture, the participating students and faculty members learned about the new ways of using internet-based social media information to conduct research to answer many of the public health issues of global and local contexts. We hope this is a beginning of a research collaboration with Prof. Mackey and the students and faculty members of KUSPH.