Washington,Monitoring Wikipedia could estimate levels of influenza-like
illness in the American population, according to a recent studyResearchers at Boston
Children's Hospital have developed a method of tracking flu levels in the
United States by analyzing Internet traffic on specific flu-related Wikipedia
articles. They found that the system was able to estimate flu levels up
to two weeks sooner than the time it takes the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention to release flu data, Fox News reported.
The
system also accurately estimated the week of peak influenza activity 17 percent
more often than Google Flu Trends data. The new method examined visits to
Wikipedia articles that included terms related to flu-like illnesses, whereas
Google Flu Trends looks at searches typed into Google.
"We
were able to get really nice estimates of what the [flu] level is in the
population," study author David McIver, a postdoctoral fellow at Boston
Children's Hospital, told Fox News.
Researchers
calculated the number of times certain Wikipedia articles were accessed every
day from December 2007 to August 2013. The model they developed performed well
both through influenza seasons that are more severe than normal and through
events such as the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 that received high levels of media
attention.
"Each
influenza season provides new challenges and uncertainties to both the public
as well as the public health community," researchers said in a statement.
They
hope to use the new method of influenza monitoring to harness publicly available
data to help people get accurate, near-real-time information about the level of
disease burden in the population.
"We
are not trying to create something that will replace the CDC or anything like
that," McIver said. Rather, the researchers' goal is "to get both
things to work well together, to give us a more holistic view of what is going
on."
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