Word: flu
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...have and might be circulating in the community. But these systems have many moving parts, relying on state, local and even community health-care workers to both recognize and report anything out of the ordinary. Once a community doctor sees what he thinks might be an unusual series of flu cases, for example, he would have to alert his local or state health departments, which would then investigate further by testing samples from the sick patients - a process that could take up to two weeks...
When the first U.S. patients fell victim to the new H1N1 flu, they may not have immediately thought to call their doctor or run to the nearest emergency room. Instead, they probably sat down in front of their computers and Googled "flu symptoms" or "fever" or "chills" or perhaps even "treatment for flu...
That behavior is exactly what the folks at Google are counting on. Since last fall, the search-engine giant has been nurturing a spin-off service called Google Flu Trends, which aims to identify outbreaks by tracking searches for flu-related terms and provide health officials with early warnings of potential epidemics. The reasoning is that if people are searching for information on the flu, they're probably sick themselves or know someone who is - and a geographic cluster of like-minded Googlers could represent a burgeoning outbreak or, worse, the roots of a new pandemic. (In the case...
Still, to the extent that data-tracking systems like Google Flu Trends could operate as early-warning networks for infectious diseases, their benefit is that they rely not on hospital data but real-time information from people who are in the process of getting sick. "What we are seeing are trends of what people are thinking about at home, perhaps before they might go to see a doctor," says Jeremy Ginsberg, lead engineer of Google Flu Trends. (See the top five swine flu...
...experts say this kind of user-fueled data-tracking may start to help government health officials' efforts to recognize outbreaks. Real-time warnings would allow authorities to stay well ahead of potential pandemics, prepare local populations with appropriate prevention and treatment, and reduce overall illness and deaths. The Google Flu Trends service, which was launched in the U.S. in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is now working with Mexican officials to track search trends in that country. The goal is to help authorities discern whether and where the disease is spreading, getting worse or starting...