Larry Brilliant, the newly appointed Executive Director of Google.org, which administers Google's philanthropic activities, intends to expand an
existing web crawler that can search for terms that might indicate disease outbreaks.
Brilliant, a physician and epidemiologist, is board certified in public health and preventive medicine and is a specialist in international health.
He wants to expand the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, which is run by the Canadian government. The network currently monitors about 20,000 Web sites in seven languages and is credited with detecting SARS, as well as picking up the initial reports of duck deaths in China that were ultimately confirmed as bird flu.
Brilliant recently received $100,000 as one of three awardees at the Technology,
Entertainment and Design Conference to help support his plan.
