Predicting dengue fever outbreaks in China using Internet searches
Thursday, November 13, 2014 - 04:31
in Health & Medicine
The habit of searching online for a diagnosis before visiting the doctor can be a powerful predictor of infectious diseases outbreaks, researchers have found. Now studies show that combining information from monitoring internet search metrics such as Baidu (China's equivalent of Google), with a web-based infectious disease alert system from reported cases and environmental factors hold the key to improving early warning systems and reducing the deadly effects of dengue fever in China.