Google Flu Trends

One of my reports yesterday was on Google Flu Trends -- a site that monitors Google search terms. Turns out searches for flu symptoms correlate pretty well to confirmed cases of the flu, AND the search engine's information beats the CDC's data by about two weeks, since it takes some time to confirm cases with laboratory testing.

If you look at the graphs, it's pretty remarkable.

http://www.google.org/flutrends/
http://www.google.org/about/flutrends/how.html

"This is obviously not flu reporting, it's flu symptom reporting. And it's not even flu symptom reporting, it's flu symptom searches," said Dr. Andrew Nowalk, an infectious diseases specialist at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, in my report. "What's remarkable though, looking at the flu trends data, that Google has put together, is how perfectly their flu trend data every year since they've been able to track it, mimics the CDC's chart of flu incidence in the United States."

Both the infectious diseases doctor and the health department spokesman I interviewed were like little boys with a new toy -- they were that excited about this. This is a brilliant public health use of Google.