Accurate Influenza Monitoring and Forecasting Using Novel Internet Data Streams: A Case Study in the Boston Metropolis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Influenza outbreaks pose major challenges to public health around the world, leading to thousands of deaths a year in the United States alone. Accurate systems that track influenza activity at the city level are necessary to provide actionable information that can be used for clinical, hospital, and community outbreak preparation.

Objective

Although Internet-based real-time data sources such as Google searches and tweets have been successfully used to produce influenza activity estimates ahead of traditional health care-based systems at national and state levels, influenza tracking and forecasting at finer spatial resolutions, such as the city level, remain an open question. Our study aimed to present a precise, near real-time methodology capable of producing infl

SUBMITTER: Lu FS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5780615 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature