Editor's Summary

19 February 2009

Google-driven epidemiology

This paper - first published on-line in November 2008 - draws on data from an early version of the Google Flu Trends search engine to estimate the levels of flu in a population. It 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.

Letter: Detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data

Jeremy Ginsberg, Matthew H. Mohebbi, Rajan S. Patel, Lynnette Brammer, Mark S. Smolinski & Larry Brilliant

doi:10.1038/nature07634

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (192K) | Supplementary information