March 3, 2006
Science.com

Disease Alert Network Proposed
By Jocelyn Kaiser

The head of Google's new foundation has begun his own philanthropic Internet project. Larry Brilliant, a physician and public health advocate, wants to improve a Canada-based network that scours the Web for early signs of disease outbreaks such as bird flu. Brilliant will seed his initial $10 million campaign with a $100,000 prize he received last week from a New York City-based group called Technology Entertainment Design for past work such as helping to eradicate smallpox and treat blindness in developing countries.

Public health experts applaud Brilliant's plans to troll millions of Web sites and publish free public disease alerts in dozens of languages. "Almost any initiative to identify infectious disease outbreaks would be welcomed by WHO," says World Health Organization spokesperson Maria Cheng.