Search engine giant Google launched a new tool on Tuesday that will help US federal health experts track the annual flu epidemic.
By logging search terms, Web giant can foretell outbreaksWASHINGTON: Search engine giant Google launched a new tool on Tuesday that will help US federal health experts track the annual flu epidemic.
Google Flu Trends uses search terms that people put into the Web-based search engine to figure out where influenza is heating up, and notify the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in real time.
“What this does is it takes Google search terms of influenza-like illness and influenza and it emulates a signal that tells us how much influenza activity there was,” Lyn Finelli, chief of influenza surveillance.
Studies indicate that between 35 and 40% of all visits to the Internet are begun by people looking for health information. When people are sick, they tend to look up their symptoms.
Google is keeping the search terms it uses private, but influenza-like illnesses include symptoms such as fever, muscle aches and cough. Sneezing usually occurs with other viruses such as rhinoviruses.
Currently, the CDC relies on centres that report on people coming to their doctors with flu-like symptoms, and lab tests that confirm whether a patient has influenza. The Google tool will track flu activity in near real time, the company said.
Early Warning
“One thing we found last year when we validated this model is it tended to predict surveillance data,” Finelli said.
“The data are really, really timely. They were able to tell us on a day-to-day basis the relative direction of flu activity for a given area. They were about a week ahead of us. They could be used ... as early warning signal for flu activity.”
Then the CDC can get the word out to hospitals, clinics and doctors offices so they can stock up on flu tests, antiviral drugs and antibiotics for people who get what are known as co-infections — bacterial infections that worsen a bout of flu.
Google is not charging for the service. Google said it would keep individual user data confidential. Influenza kills an estimated 36,000 people a year in the US and 250,000-500,000 globally.
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