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October 8, 2009
Flu Wars: Microsoft's New H1N1 Site, Google Flu Trends Expands
The good news about companies competing to get information about the flu out to the public is that said public now has abundant resources to stay informed. Microsoft and Google are both promoting their flu sites this week; here's the lowdown:
Microsoft launched an H1N1 site this week. Check it out at http://www.h1n1responsecenter.com. The site helps people assess their symptoms to see if they meet H1N1 criteria.
"If current estimates are correct, many emergency departments across the nation could be overwhelmed by two groups of patients -- those who have H1N1 and those who believe they have H1N1," said Angela Gardner, M.D., FACEP, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
"By providing an at-home tool that can help users evaluate whether they need to see a provider before they head to the hospital, we can encourage those who are severely ill or at risk for serious illness to contact their doctor, and reassure everyone else that it is safe and prudent to recover at home," Dr. Arthur Kellermann, professor of emergency medicine and an associate dean of the Emory School of Medicine.
Keeping the infected and uninfected separated is crucial to preventing the spread of the H1N1 flu.
"This will reduce the number of people needlessly exposed to H1N1 influenza in crowded clinic and ER waiting rooms, and allow doctors and nurses to focus their attention on those who need them most."
Meanwhile, Google has expanded their flu trends to include 16 additional countries. The site, which launched last November, is now available in 37 different languages. Google says that it does not use popular terms such as the colloquial "swine flu" because many searchers are simply looking it up due to news headlines. Instead, Google uses CDC data to corroborate flu-related search terms. In countries, such as Mexico, where they do not have historical data, they use seasonality to help determine relevant searches. They've also labeled such efforts as "experimental" since they're based purely on search.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on October 8, 2009 12:22 PM
Comments
The Color Copy Guy October 8, 2009 4:46 PM
This is good news! Spread the knowledge about H1N1 virus so that people will not be on a panic if this virus will strike back.
Dental Roseville February 5, 2010 1:49 AM
This seems kind of goofy. Building flu trends off of search data does not seem like a reliable model. Let's just assume for a second that every search they rank in their statistics was actually queried by someone who is sick. Many of these people are actually suffering from a cold, not the flu, but are searching for symptoms to make sure they don't have the flu. Without a doubt, far more people will get a common cold than H1N1. and in this state of terror over the pandemic, many will research their symptoms on Google. This would skew the results dramatically.
Second, they say they omit searches for "swine flu" because these people would be more likely to be looking for information due to things they've heard in the news, not because they are actually sick. This makes absolutely no sense. Far more people use the term swine flu than H1N1. If today I call it swine flu, and tomorrow I get sick, I'm not going to start calling it H1N1.
Maybe they should stick to search and let the CDC take care of disease stats... that is, unless Google thinks they can't trust the CDC to give us real data. (Anyone ever read The Stand??) But I don't picture the folks at Google being tinfoil-hat wearers.