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Why Google Flu Trends Will Not Replace the CDC Anytime Soon
By Brian Resnick
Updated: January 25, 2013 | 4:04 p.m.
Google Flu Trends is a useful tool in tracking the severity of a given flu season. But take some caution in drawing conclusions from it. . . .
?We intend to update our model each year with the latest sentinel provider [influenza-like illness] data, obtaining a better fit and adjusting as online health-seeking behavior evolves over time,? Matt Mohebbi, a Google software engineer wrote on Forbes recently. ?With respect to the current flu season, it?s still too early to tell how the model is performing.?
Recently, I spoke with Lynnette Brammer, a flu epidemiologist with the CDC, about the role of technology in disease tracking and about how we can explain the discrepancy in the charts above [Google Charts].
Is it fair to compare CDC's flu tracking with Google's Flu Trends?
There?s pros and cons to both systems. Because [Google?s] system is real-time, that gives us a peak of what might be coming a week early. The downside is, you can?t track down those signals. If you see an increase in flu, you can?t find out what it really is, at least not directly. Whereas in our ILI system, if we see an increase in people going to the doctors for flu-like illness and we look at our laboratory data and we don?t see any increase in flu, we?ll check with our colleagues who look at other respiratory viruses. And we don?t see anything there, we can always call the state, and the state calls the physician, and say, ?The next few people who come in that look like they have flu, can you take some samples and send them to our lab?? We can directly follow up on those and investigate things that we think are unusual.
There can be things in Google Flu Trends that cause signals that maybe aren?t flu. They try very hard to filter out signals that could be caused purely by increased media interest. At the beginning of the pandemic in 2009, they probably had done too good of a job of that. They didn?t pick up the signal in the beginning. They modified, and they had said all along, ?We?re going to do this, and if we learn more we?re going to modify our algorithms." And they did, and it seems to be working, but they seem to be a little high. Changes in people?s [search] behaviors can change that. . . .
Five years from now, what do you predict will change in the way CDC tracks the flu? Or what do you hope for?
In five years from now, I would like to get an even larger proportion of my laboratory data electronically, using standard messaging. We have been working to get more and more of that doctor-office data electronically.
And as more and more of them get those systems, we want to be able to collect the data in a way that doesn?t take up a physician or somebody in his office staff, it doesn?t take up so much of their time. We want to make reporting easier and, we want to get more data, but we don?t want to put an additional burden on people. . . .
So it sounds like the optimal flu tracking system is a combination of Google Flu Trends and CDC?s tracking. Instant data, but also very specific data.
We want the data transmission to be as easy for the people providing it to us as possible. But the thing we don?t want is to lose the connection we have with those people. Even if you have really good data coming in, you?re always going to have questions about what it means. And nothing replaces being able to call up a doctor?s office, when you are seeing something unusual, and just being able to say, ?What do you think is going on?" And these guys in addition, when they see something that?s unusual or something they don?t understand, they have the phone number of somebody at the health department, so I think they are more likely to call. We don?t want to lose that. . . .
http://www.nationaljournal.com/heal...ds-will-not-replace-cdc-anytime-soon-20130125
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By Brian Resnick
Updated: January 25, 2013 | 4:04 p.m.
Google Flu Trends is a useful tool in tracking the severity of a given flu season. But take some caution in drawing conclusions from it. . . .
?We intend to update our model each year with the latest sentinel provider [influenza-like illness] data, obtaining a better fit and adjusting as online health-seeking behavior evolves over time,? Matt Mohebbi, a Google software engineer wrote on Forbes recently. ?With respect to the current flu season, it?s still too early to tell how the model is performing.?
Recently, I spoke with Lynnette Brammer, a flu epidemiologist with the CDC, about the role of technology in disease tracking and about how we can explain the discrepancy in the charts above [Google Charts].
Is it fair to compare CDC's flu tracking with Google's Flu Trends?
There?s pros and cons to both systems. Because [Google?s] system is real-time, that gives us a peak of what might be coming a week early. The downside is, you can?t track down those signals. If you see an increase in flu, you can?t find out what it really is, at least not directly. Whereas in our ILI system, if we see an increase in people going to the doctors for flu-like illness and we look at our laboratory data and we don?t see any increase in flu, we?ll check with our colleagues who look at other respiratory viruses. And we don?t see anything there, we can always call the state, and the state calls the physician, and say, ?The next few people who come in that look like they have flu, can you take some samples and send them to our lab?? We can directly follow up on those and investigate things that we think are unusual.
There can be things in Google Flu Trends that cause signals that maybe aren?t flu. They try very hard to filter out signals that could be caused purely by increased media interest. At the beginning of the pandemic in 2009, they probably had done too good of a job of that. They didn?t pick up the signal in the beginning. They modified, and they had said all along, ?We?re going to do this, and if we learn more we?re going to modify our algorithms." And they did, and it seems to be working, but they seem to be a little high. Changes in people?s [search] behaviors can change that. . . .
Five years from now, what do you predict will change in the way CDC tracks the flu? Or what do you hope for?
In five years from now, I would like to get an even larger proportion of my laboratory data electronically, using standard messaging. We have been working to get more and more of that doctor-office data electronically.
And as more and more of them get those systems, we want to be able to collect the data in a way that doesn?t take up a physician or somebody in his office staff, it doesn?t take up so much of their time. We want to make reporting easier and, we want to get more data, but we don?t want to put an additional burden on people. . . .
So it sounds like the optimal flu tracking system is a combination of Google Flu Trends and CDC?s tracking. Instant data, but also very specific data.
We want the data transmission to be as easy for the people providing it to us as possible. But the thing we don?t want is to lose the connection we have with those people. Even if you have really good data coming in, you?re always going to have questions about what it means. And nothing replaces being able to call up a doctor?s office, when you are seeing something unusual, and just being able to say, ?What do you think is going on?" And these guys in addition, when they see something that?s unusual or something they don?t understand, they have the phone number of somebody at the health department, so I think they are more likely to call. We don?t want to lose that. . . .
http://www.nationaljournal.com/heal...ds-will-not-replace-cdc-anytime-soon-20130125
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