Google-driven Epidemiology

摘要

Published on-line last November, the Nature paper drawing on data from an early version of the Google Flu Trends search engine to estimate current flu levels is now in print. The paper introduces a computational model that converts raw search query data into a region-by-region real-time surveillance system that accurately estimates influenza activity with a lag of about one day - one to two weeks faster than the conventional reports published by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control.