Chattanooga: Tracking flu bug through Google

Nov 28, 2008 (Chattanooga Times/Free Press - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- GOOG | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- What's the first thing you do when you start feeling sick?

A good number of today's patients do a quick Web search for their symptoms, experts say, and researchers at one of the nation's largest search engines see those keystrokes as an indicator of real flu activity.

By tracking flu-related queries, researchers at Google.org say they can identify actual influenza outbreaks and provide Web surfers a real-time glimpse of flu activity in their states, using a new tool called Google Flu Trends.

Local and state health officials say the project is intriguing, but they're not sure how useful the information will be from a public health standpoint.

"For many people, the Internet is the first place they go (when they're getting sick) to look to try and figure out what might be going on," said Dr. Kelly Moore, medical director for the state's immunization program, part of the Tennessee Department of Health. "This will be the very first time we're having experience with Google Flu Trends and our traditional (surveillance) system. We're excited to see if it can be helpful to us."

Google search data in past years has correlated closely with actual levels of flu-like illnesses as reported to federal health officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a paper by Google researchers that has been accepted for publication in the journal "Nature."

So what's the benefit of Google's data over the federal and state surveillance that comes directly from provider reports? It's immediacy.

Federal surveillance efforts take some time to collect and compile weekly data from doctors at the local and state level, resulting in a one- to two-week delay in reporting.

Google Flu Trends gives a much more immediate glimpse into suggested flu activity and could provide an early warning for flu outbreaks, the Google Web site says. Early notice of an outbreak can prompt procrastinators to get their flu vaccinations and cut down on the spread of the illness, Dr. Moore said.

Early this week the Google tool classified Tennessee as one of a number of states with "moderate" flu activity, though now it is listed with "low" activity. Georgia also is classified as having "low" activity.

Tennessee health officials still are reporting a low level of activity in the state, Dr. Moore said.

"I guess in a couple of weeks it'll be interesting to look back and see if the information we get this week (from doctors) looks like the information Google is putting out this week," Dr. Moore said.

In Hamilton County, 29 cases of influenza-like illness have been reported for the week of Nov. 17, said Margaret Zylstra, epidemiology manager with the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department.

For now, Google's flu data is at the state level, and the researchers do not yet have plans to give more localized data, said Katy Bacon, spokeswoman for Google.org, in an e-mail interview.

Google researchers admit on their Web site that certainly not all of the people doing Google searches related to influenza actually have the flu and that "false alarm" searches could be triggered by something like a drug recall.

Another weakness of the tool is that tallying Internet-based searches leaves out a huge demographic of people who are most susceptible to the flu -- the elderly and very young children, Ms. Zylstra said.

Still, she said, "It's a good tool that we could possibly use for prevention measures."

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