Google search can help track dengue with this new tool

San Francisco: An analytical tool has been developed by a team of researchers that uses Google Search data with government-provided clinical input to track dengue in less-developed countries.

The new tool provides a near real-time monitoring that could enable faster response to outbreaks.

Senior author Mauricio Santillana in a paper published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology said,"The wide availability of internet throughout the globe provides the potential for an alternative way to reliably track infectious diseases, such as dengue, faster than traditional clinical-based systems."

Santillana added,"This alternative way of tracking disease could be used to alert governments and hospitals when elevated dengue incidence is anticipated and provide safety information for travellers."

The research builds on a mathematical modelling tool, known as "AutoRegression with Google Search queries" (ARGO), which was earlier used to track influenza in the US a few years ago.

The research team modified ARGO to explore its potential to track dengue activity in Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, Singapore and Taiwan.

The researchers used Google's "Trends" tool to track the top 10 dengue-related search queries made by users in each country during the study period and gathered historical dengue data from government health agencies and input both datasets into ARGO.

Future work could investigate whether this method could be improved to track disease on finer spatial and temporal scales, and whether environmental data, such as temperature, could improve estimates.

(With IANS inputs)