But Google Flu Trends doesn't replace the CDC's national surveillance program, Yood stresses. Although it matches CDC-detected trends to within 95 percent, it's less accurate at estimating actual rates of laboratory-confirmed flu, according to a study presented May 17 at the American Thoracic Society 2010 International Conference in New Orleans.
Focusing on flu outbreaks in the U.S. between 2003 and 2008, Justin Ortiz from the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Washington and colleagues from CDC and PATH, a Seattle-based nonprofit health organization, found that Google Flu Trends deviated greatest from CDC surveillance figures for laboratory-confirmed flu rates during the 2003–2004 flu season, which saw a high number of flu-related deaths in children and, as a result, was a hot topic in the media. During periods of intense media interest or unexpected flu activity, Google Flu Trends might be less accurate in estimating flu rates because of the heightened public interest and increased search activity, the researchers concluded.
"Still, Google Flu Trends provides an excellent public health service, because it's fast and cheap and requires very little infrastructure," Ortiz says.
Google Flu Trends was launched in the U.S. in November 2008. Here, it tracks flu-like illness at the state level, but work is under way to narrow monitoring down to individual cities. The effort has since expanded to track flu-like illness in 20 countries, with results in 38 languages.
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Add CommentIf Google can map flu trends- makes you wonder what else they can track... and you can bet any authoritarian government would love to have access to google's data to manage their country.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWonder if google could beat out the exit polls in predicting election results based on peoples searches.
"Healthcare" democrat voter.
"Military" republican voter.
"Where to buy pot" libertarian voter.
This is why Google said NO to China
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdata from google trends is available to anyone with an internet connection, not just google. since the information is open, there should be no need to worry about authoritarianism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Before visiting a clinic, many flu sufferers visit Web sites for information about symptoms and remedies"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an important assumption for the usefulness of Google Trend. Is there any evidence shows that people visiting internet BEFORE they go to doctors? I can see the major peaks of Google Trend are always a little behind the peaks of CDC data, suggesting people visit websites AFTER hearing CDC warnings from news or other resources.
Well
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe merits of "this" are so extreme its hard not appreciate that the CDC were excited.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTake for instance the death flu...everyone dies from it after 36 hours...with the internet google feature assuming the tracking system actually worked the death flu would be halted before and this is a guess more than 40% of the population had been infected and killed. Sure most of the world would be dead and the people on the TV explaining what to do would be dead people walking...but for those people who hadnt gone shopping in the last 3 days would be alive and well.
Ahh, maybe China may take the flu rate as a country secret or Google was not welcome in Chinese official media so Google hard to get the data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismay be if you want to,make more web information,about alexa rank,ip look up,TLDs and DNS look up www.websitelog.net...that is the good website....
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