title: Participatory Online Surveillance as a Supplementary Tool to Sentinel Doctors for Influenza-Like Illness Surveillance in Italy.
abstract: The monitoring of seasonal influenza yearly epidemics remains one of the main activity of national syndromic surveillance systems. The development of internet-based surveillance tools has brought an innovative approach to seasonal influenza surveillance by directly involving self-selected volunteers among the general population reporting their health status on a weekly basis throughout the flu season. In this paper, we explore how Influweb, an internet-based monitoring system for influenza surveillance, deployed in Italy since 2008 has performed during three years from 2012 to 2015 in comparison with data collected during the same period by the Italian sentinel doctors surveillance system.
authors.affiliation: Computational Epidemiology Laboratory, ISI Foundation, Turin, Italy.
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Perrotta
authors.affiliation: Centro Nazionale di Epidemiologia, Sorveglianza e Promozione della Salute, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Antonino
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bella
authors.affiliation: Centro Nazionale di Epidemiologia, Sorveglianza e Promozione della Salute, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Caterina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rizzo
authors.affiliation: Computational Epidemiology Laboratory, ISI Foundation, Turin, Italy.
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Paolotti
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007251:Influenza, Human / Q000453:epidemiology*; D020407:Internet; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D018571:Sentinel Surveillance; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000379:methods*