Institute For The Future

Mining Search Trends for Public Health

Google Flu has been using search trend data as a crude way to provide an early warning of the threat of an outbreak--and a new study seems to confirm this approach. According to a new study in the the Canadian Medical Association Journal, search queries for "Listerosis" spiked in mid and late July, a full month before Canadian public health officials made an official announcement of an outbreak.

 

While searches for listeriosis--the technical term--grew before an official announcement of the outbreak, searches for the more popular term, "listeria," remained stable until after the announcement and its surrounding media coverage. Because of this, the study's authors have speculated that family and friends of the newly diagnosed drove the uptick in search, or that alternatively, public health and food inspectors were searching in larger numbers because a growing number of professionals feared a larger public health problem.

 

In either case, while search trend data can provide an interesting signal, it is, not surprisingly, somewhat unreliable. Something as simple as a stray mention of an illness on a television show can prompt a spike in searches and trigger a false signal.