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Sneezing 2.0: Google's Flu Trends |
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Dr. Samuel Says -
Smart Design
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 12 November 2008 |
A while back, I wrote about how disease specialists were using massively multiplayer online games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft to model potential disease outbreaks. This is a riddle the Center for Disease Control has been trying to crack for decades; how to best and most accurately track the spread of outbreaks.
 Well, now Google -- as is its wont -- has jumped into the fray and
started flinging around improvements. The new Google Flu Trends system
watches for keyword searches such as "flu symptoms" and tracks the data
geographically. Overlaid onto a U.S. map, the data tracking can help to
determine when and where flu outbreaks are happening.
Google's new health initiative, developed in collaboration with the
CDC, reportedly is producing better and more accurate tracking numbers
than any of the other current systems in use. Jeremy Ginsberg, the lead
engineer who developed the site, told CNN:"What's exciting about Flu
Trends is that it lets anybody -- epidemiologists, health officials,
moms with sick children -- learn about the current flu activity level
in their own state based on data that's coming in this week."
Very exciting, and particularly relevant to us here at Dyscern World HQ
labs. We're still in quarantine lockdown due to last week's little
incident. No wonder the CDC hasn't been returning our calls.
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