Google has launched a new tool ‘Dengue Trends’ that detects dengue fever cases across the world realtime.
The search engine company hopes to help health officials prepare for dengue outbreaks through search patterns. The early-warning system is expected to be useful in countries such as Bolivia, Brazil, India, Indonesia and Singapore.
The methodology used by Dengue Trends is the same behind Google Flu Trends, which was used in 2009 to track the spread of flu.
"Of course, not every person who searches for ‘dengue’ is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the dengue-related search queries are added together," Google wrote in a blog post.
Google software engineer Vikram Sahai wrote in a blog post, "Using the dengue case count data provided by Ministries of Health and the World Health Organisation, we’re able to build a model that offers near real-time estimates of dengue activity based on the popularity of certain search terms."
The company said that unlike official records which could take days to compile and analyse, Dengue Trends does the job in realtime.
"Google Dengue Trends is automatically updated every day, thereby providing an early indicator of dengue activity."
The new tool is the result of a collaboration between Boston’s Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
