Lifestyle Disease Surveillance Using Population Search Behavior: Feasibility Study.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:As the process of producing official health statistics for lifestyle diseases is slow, researchers have explored using Web search data as a proxy for lifestyle disease surveillance. Existing studies, however, are prone to at least one of the following issues: ad-hoc keyword selection, overfitting, insufficient predictive evaluation, lack of generalization, and failure to compare against trivial baselines. OBJECTIVE:The aims of this study were to (1) employ a corrective approach improving previous methods; (2) study the key limitations in using Google Trends for lifestyle disease surveillance; and (3) test the generalizability of our methodology to other countries beyond the United States. METHODS:For each of the target variables (diabetes, obesity, and exercise), prevalence rate

SUBMITTER: Memon SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7011125 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature