Some of you may recall a story about how Google is using search trends to monitor global flu activity. It turns out that this same concept can be applied to track other communicable diseases as well, and Google Singapore has just informed us that it will track dengue fever in the same way.
Google’s new service ‘Dengue Trends’ monitors dengue-related searches from Bolivia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Singapore and presents a real-time model of estimated dengue activity.
We asked a Google spokesperson this afternoon to elaborate on exactly how this works:
The queries generally include search terms regarding dengue complications, treatments and symptoms. Imagine what you would do if you suspected you or your child were sick with dengue – you might try to look up a symptom. Some search queries tend to be popular exactly when dengue activity is increasing, and are therefore good indicators of dengue activity.
As you can see below, the search trends (India in this case) strongly correlate with the actual spread of dengue fever:
Google Correlate, a tool that the company rolled out last week, was used to create this system. When we asked if there were plans to surveil additional diseases, Google informed us that the introduction of Google Correlate should enable researchers to do so own their own. The spokesperson added that this is “a more scalable way to take advantage of this unique data.”
Google is no stranger to providing tools to be used for civic good. We reported last month about the myriad of ways that Google’s services were being used to share critical information in the wake of the tragic Japan earthquake.
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