VaxPulse: Monitoring of Online Public Concerns to Enhance Post-licensure Vaccine Surveillance
This addresses vaccine safety surveillance for public health agencies by providing enhanced monitoring tools, though it appears incremental as an extension of existing systems.
The researchers tackled the problem of monitoring public vaccine concerns by developing VaxPulse, a framework that integrates adverse event reports with online sentiment analysis, which identified public opinion patterns and vaccine hesitancy in real-world case studies.
The recent vaccine-related infodemic has amplified public concerns, highlighting the need for proactive misinformation management. We describe how we enhanced the reporting surveillance system of Victoria's vaccine safety service, SAEFVIC, through the incorporation of new information sources for public sentiment analysis, topics of discussion, and hesitancies about vaccinations online. Using VaxPulse, a multi-step framework, we integrate adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) with sentiment analysis, demonstrating the importance of contextualising public concerns. Additionally, we emphasise the need to address non-English languages to stratify concerns across ethno-lingual communities, providing valuable insights for vaccine uptake strategies and combating mis/disinformation. The framework is applied to real-world examples and a case study on women's vaccine hesitancy, showcasing its benefits and adaptability by identifying public opinion from online media.