Monitoring disease trends using hospital traffic data from high resolution satellite imagery: a feasibility study.

ABSTRACT: Challenges with alternative data sources for disease surveillance include differentiating the signal from the noise, and obtaining information from data constrained settings. For the latter, events such as increases in hospital traffic could serve as early indicators of social disruption resulting from disease. In this study, we evaluate the feasibility of using hospital parking lot traffic data extracted from high-resolution satellite imagery to augment public health disease surveillance in Chile, Argentina and Mexico. We used archived satellite imagery collected from January 2010 to May 2013 and data on the incidence of respiratory virus illnesses from the Pan American Health Organization as a reference. We developed dynamical Elastic Net multivariable linear regression models to estimat

SUBMITTER: Nsoesie EO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4357853 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature