Google Remains the Flu Online

Due to the worldwide concern about the influenza, Google decided to apply the same technique to predict outbreaks of this virus in Mexico, as it has in other countries.

This tool can detect disease trends in our country to a calculation “near real time” the number of flu cases is in other parts of the world and that warn of new outbreaks in advance.

How does it work?

As explained in a press conference, ‘Google Flu’, uses a methodology quite simple but effective measures related to outbreaks in a number of queries made by users on topics that are directly related to the disease.

Thus it is possible to estimate the number of cases of disease in a given country.

“When we have symptoms of a disease, we turn to the Internet, as we go whenever we get information,” explained company spokesman. In fact, the designers of Google searches found that people did on their symptoms were “related” to the statistics published on this disease some health institutions ended.

Google Flu

Advantages

Google Flu offers a world map with the influenza color evolution in each country, and another page where you can see on a graph if the bird is increasing or decreasing and compare it with developments followed in other years.

What differentiates this new tool, other statistics, such as surveys that are conducted each year to doctors and patients during the months of highest incidence of influenza, is the immediacy, since the former usually take a week or two, while ‘Google Flu’ is updated every time a user conducts a search.

Background

In late 2008, Google released this tool to visualize in real time the evolution of influenza outbreaks in the United States.

In the case of the United States managed to validate the information with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, United States (CDC for short in English), so for the Mexican case the tool is only found in an experimental phase, because these data are not yet checked with the official authorities, ie with those provided by the Ministry of Health.

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October 13, 2009 · Posted in Internet, Unique Ideas 

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