title: Monitoring influenza activity in Europe with Google Flu Trends: comparison with the findings of sentinel physician networks - results for 2009-10.
abstract: The number of Internet searches has recently been used by Google to estimate the influenza incidence in the United States. We examined the correlation between the Google Flu Trends tool and sentinel networks estimates in several European countries during the 2009 influenza A(H1N1) pandemic and found a good correlation between estimates and peak incidence timing, with the highest peaks in countries where Internet is most frequently used for health-related searching. Although somehow limited, Google could be a valuable tool for syndromic surveillance.
authors.affiliation: Hospital de Denia, Spain. tonyvald@hotmail.com
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Valdivia
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lopez-Alcalde
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vicente
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pichiule
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ruiz
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ordobas
mesh_terms: D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D053118:Influenza A Virus, H1N1 Subtype; D007251:Influenza, Human / Q000453:epidemiology*; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D020407:Internet; D010820:Physicians; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods*