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Google Flu Trends

Using Google Flu Trends to track this season's flu epidemic may give your organization's response a two-week head-start. According to Google's web site:
"We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for "flu" is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and found that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States.
It'll be interesting to see how Google's forecast correlates with this season's actual cases. If it works, look for more early-warning applications to emerge once policy-makers get comfortable adding a rather unconventional methodology to their epidemic/pandemic tracking toolbox.


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