Google searches help warn of flu outbreaks

INTERNET giant Google has launched an early-warning system for flu outbreaks in the US.

By tracking the popularity of certain search queries, its engineers “can accurately estimate the level of flu in each state, in near real time”, a spokesman said.

Google Flu Trends currently only covers the US, but the technology giant is hoping to eventually use the same technique to help track influenza and other diseases worldwide.

The system, which keeps track of searches such as “flu symptoms”, enables the early-warning data to be available daily, much quicker than traditional tracking systems which can take up to two weeks. “As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer,” a Google spokesman said.

“We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms.

“During the last flu season, we shared our preliminary results with the Epidemiology and Prevention Branch of the Influenza Division at CDC (the US Centres for Disease Control and prevention).

“Together we saw that our search-based flu estimates had a consistently strong correlation with real CDC flu data.”

A paper on the methodology behind Google Flu Trends is expected to be published in the journal Nature.