The Big Brother of Influenza: Someone knows way before your doctor does

So far, this flu season has been pretty lame.  Unlike the H1N1 flu outbreak of 2009 -2010 which sent panicked citizens searching for a flu shot, this year, the trend is pretty typical.

Sporadic cases across the country. Business as usual.

But if things do heat up out there and the flu begins to hit big time, someone is going to know well before your doctor, even before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Who, Big Brother?   Google!

By "monitoring health seeking behavior in the form of queries to online search engines" google can predict a flu epidemic perhaps 2 weeks or more before it is reported by the CDC.  Google's monitoring of web inquiries is real time whereas the CDC relies on a reporting structure via state health departments. When people feel sick, they web search their symptoms and suggested treatments for the flu.  Google analyzes these search trends and can do it all over the world.  Although the CDC's statistical analysis and geo-mapping is the gold standard, it takes time.

On this chart from Google, the blue line represents search trends related to the flu and the orange line is actual flu cases as reported by the CDC.  Pretty impressive.

 Now add to this work being done at the community level by networks of health care providers such as the Alliance of Chicago Community Health Services and others who are collaborating with the CDC to monitor real time health care data right from the doctor's office as markers of flu outbreaks.  Let's say thousands of elderly visit their doctor in Chicago next week with a fever, cough and body aches and that temperature and symptom data is sent, real time, to the CDC.  The data is de-identified, to protect privacy.  The CDC then uses this information to immediately predict flu hot spots, do targeted virus identification tests, rush additional vaccine or plan to target increased supplies of medication.

If Google, the CDC and networks of health providers know all this information as nature actually takes its course, some might cry "Foul,  Big Brother again."  But I think it's a good thing. It's protects privacy and it's accurate.  So go ahead and get your flu shot if you haven't done so already, before Big Brother tells you it's too late.