The Feasibility of Using Internet Search Engine for Monitoring Trends of Environmental Infectious Diseases

• Main Authors: Chin Mei Ke, 柯金美
• Other Authors: Yusen Eason Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7x2eq8

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 環境教育研究所 === 97 === In 2007, World Health Organization (WHO) proposed an early warning system to respond to an influenza pandemic. Currently the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is using Google Search tools to track influenza test dynamic trend. Therefore, the objective of this study is in attempted to use Google search for outbreak prediction in enterovirus infection, dengue fever and influenza. We use Taiwan CDC’s case reporting system as our reference data to test the hypothesis that Google Search data can be a predictive tool for future outbreaks. Pearson correlation and simple linear regression were used for analysis. Our results showed that Google search volume and search perspective of enterovirus infection, dengue fever epidemic have significant correlations between the Google search perspective and Taiwan CDC reporting data. The results of this study can be used to monitor Google search perspective in real time for prediction of disease outbreak of dengue fever, and to understand what the most people concerned about in public health and epidemiology. We recommend this application to be experimented by the government health authorities for infectious diseases perspective as an early warning system.