Disease Surveillance 2.0

Vikram SahaiSoftware Engineer, Google

Medicine 2.0 StanfordThe Interconnected LifeSeptember 16, 2011

People search when they're sick

Pew Internet Research (U.S. adults, 2010):•     61%   --   get health information online•     62%   --   use social network sites•     60%   --   online info affected healthcare decision

Wisdom of the online crowd?• Can the cloud "know" about disease outbreaks?

Infodemiology, Computational Epidemiology

 

BBC - The Code

Google Flu Trends

References:

Detecting Influenza Epidemics Using Search Engine Query DataJeremy Ginsberg, Matthew Mohebbi, Rajan Patel, Mark Smolinski, Larry Brilliant(Google)

Lynnette Brammer(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

www.google.org/flutrends

Flu Trends for 28 countries in 39 languages

What about pandemic flu? The Mexico story

And H1N1 spread…

Google Dengue Trendswww.google.org/denguetrends

References:

Using Web Search Query Data to Monitor Dengue EpidemicsVikram Sahai, Corrie Conrad(Google)

Emily Chan, John Brownstein(Children's Hospital, Boston)

Dengue Trends for 5 countries in 39 languages

What else could be?

Apps, Maps and Outbreaks near you... 

HealthMap.org: crawling informal and online news sources.Outbreaks Near Me

Social data streams and Sentiment

Measuring Gross National Happiness:

Twitter data:o H1N1 in the US (U. of Iowa)o Ailment Topic Model (Johns Hopkins)o Dengue tweets from Brazil (U. of Minas Gerais)

 Kidney Stones' Seasonality (UCSF/Stanford)

Limitations of Online Info Sources

Reflect the demographics?• Internet penetration• Urban/rural population• Income disparity

Search-based models:• Celebrity/news effect• Unusual, scary outbreaks• Precise location of user

Scarcity of truth data about actual outbreaks

Have Data? Will Model

Thank you!