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Is Google better than the CDC at tracking the flu?

By: CHP | Posted on: November 13th, 2008 | Share:
Categories: Policies and Laws • Public Health • Did You Know?

On its Flu Trends website, Google says “we’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu surveillance systems.”

As the New York Times reported on November 12, the act of Googling “flu symptoms,” multiplied across millions of keyboards in homes around the country, has given rise to a new early warning system for fast-spreading flu outbreaks, and says that “some public health experts say the Google data could help accelerate the response of doctors, hospitals and public health officials to a nasty flu season, reducing the spread of the disease and, potentially, saving lives.”

In fact, Google.org, the philanthropic division of Google, claims that it can detect flu outbreaks, up to ten days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What are the implications of this?

“From a technological perspective, it is the beginning,” said Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive. The Times points to the phenomenon of “collective intelligence,” which can be used to spot trends and make predictions. Web queries for hotels, mortgage foreclosures, cars, and certain types of jobs, for example, express the world’s collective desires and needs, its wants and likes, and can forecast what technology products will be hits, for instance.

Yet,  Dr. Farzad Mostashari, assistant commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in New York City, says, “we don’t have any evidence that this is more timely than our emergency room data,”

What do you think?