There's No INSTEDD without Open Access

An interesting story in eWeek.com. Larry Brilliant, newly-appointed head of the Google.org philanthropic foundation, wants to set up a dedicated search engine that will spot incipient disease outbreaks.

The planned name is INSTEDD: International Networked System for Total Early Disease Detection - a reference to the fact that it represents an alternative option to just waiting for cataclysmic infections - like pandemics - to happen. According to the article:

Brilliant wants to expand an existing web crawler run by the Canadian government. The Global Public Health Intelligence Network monitors about 20,000 Web sites in seven languages, searching for terms that could warn of an outbreak.

What's interesting about this - apart from the novel idea of spotting outbreaks around the physical world by scanning the information shadow they leave in the digital cyberworld - is that to work it depends critically on having free access to as much information and as many scientific and medical reports as possible.

Indeed, this seems a clear case where it could be claimed that not providing open access in relevant areas - and the range of subjects that are relevant is vast - is actually endangering the lives of millions of people. Something for publishers and their lawyers to think about, perhaps.