Atishu! Bless you..

Since it’s March and for some reason we’ve been getting snow I found something very relative for this flu season known as Google Flu Trends! This data base that Google have compiled show the trends of the flu in recent years in relation to the time of year, general location and number of people affected. The information can then be summarized by means of a graph. And as can be seen below the information gathered seems to be quite accurate when compared to studies found by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

It works based on a summary of what people search for when using Google. In short, they have found a close relationship between people searching for flu-related topics and how many people actually have the flu. The flu-related topics are then compiled in relation to areas/ regions or states hence showing flu-estimates in various regions of the United States. Of course just presuming the searches mean that people actually have the flu isn’t very accurate, but after numerous tests against the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures  regarding outbreaks of influenza the results from Google searches very closely match.

 

The main advantage of this is that Google Flu Trends is able to compile the figures almost automatically allowing Google to provide information about flu outbreaks much quicker. The older systems used to monitor these outbreaks can take 1 – 2 weeks to produce results. Soon Google plan on making this service expand further than the US and hopefully then we’ll all be prepared for when the flu is around the corner! Maybe Google are on the way to extinguishing the common cold!

http://www.google.org/flutrends/