Flu-gle
Can Google predict where disease will strike next? Well, no, but its services are being used to help decipher where about on the planet diseases such as flu are rife with a surprisingly high level of accuracy.
Google isn't just about internet marketing, you know. As part of Google.org, aggregate data is collected from across the web from blogs, news reports, posts on chat rooms and many more sources to construct a map of where cases of Influenza are at their highest, and posted on a service called Google Flu Trends. It’s getting more precise as time goes on, according to Corrie Conrad who is part of the Flu Trends team:
"We have flu estimates for 28 countries and accuracy will vary depending on each country. But in the United States when compared with the official data from the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), we found we were over 90% accurate.”
The influenza virus has been the bane of humanity for centuries, but having a close-to-accurate world map of the areas where the disease is most troublesome for users to see is a great way to plan ahead, just in case it looks to be spreading their way. Users are also able to view month-by-month charts and graphs of flu levels
A key benefit, as Corrie points out. “"It can take one to two weeks for the CDC to collect data from the different doctors across the country that are part of their system but search data is updated automatically every day." Looks like flu has unwittingly gone through some SEO of its own…
Investing in further web development and possibly combining it with social media and other services could help make the worldwide population more alert about flu, and if it’s potentially about to strike their area. Though Google Flu Trends won’t stop you waking up with the sniffles one morning and having a few days off work, it has the potential to help people prepare accordingly as and when the service develops further.
