12-Jan-2012 - Google helps predict flu case surge for hospitals

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Tracking internet searches for flu information may be more useful in helping hospital emergency rooms prepare for a surge in sick patients than relying NFL shop jerseys on outdated government reports on flu cases, a new study suggests. The study by a research team from Johns Hopkins Medicine is believed to be the first to show that Google Flu Trends data strongly correlates with an upswing in emergency room activity. The study was published Monday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. For the study, researchers compared Google Flu Trends data — which tracks internet searches for flu information — with information on the number of people seeking treatment for flu-like symptoms at the adult and pediatric emergency departments at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md., from January 2009 to October 2010.Early warning systemThe correlation between internet searches and patient volume was most pronounced for visits to the pediatric emergency room, said cheap NFL jerseys Dr. Richard Rothman, an emergency room physician and researcher at the John Hopkins University school of medicine. Rothman said the results show promise for eventually developing a standard regional or national early warning system for frontline health-care workers. Currently, hospitals rely on case reports provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the October-May flu season as a key way to track flu outbreaks. Those reports are compiled using a combination of data about hospital admissions, laboratory test results and clinical symptoms. But they are often weeks old by the time hospitals get them and so don't allow frontline health-care cheap nba jerseys workers enough time to prepare for a surge in flu cases, even as the flu is spreading in real time, Rothman said. Google Flu Trends, on the other hand, collects and provides data on search traffic for flu information on a daily basis by detecting and analyzing certain flu-related search terms.

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