Adaptive nowcasting of influenza outbreaks using Google searches

Abstract

Seasonal influenza outbreaks and pandemics of new strains of the influenza virus affect humans around the globe. However, traditional systems for measuring the spread of flu infections deliver results with one or two weeks delay. Recent research suggests that data on queries made to the search engineGoogle can be used to address this problem, providing real-time estimates of levels of influenza-like illness in a population.