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Researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston and Google.org, the philanthropy arm of Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG), said Tuesday they have developed a new online tool for early detection of dengue outbreaks.
The tool, available at www.google.org/denguetrends, could help public health officials in the more than 100 countries affected by dengue respond more quickly to nascent epidemics, according to the researchers, who also published their findings Tuesday in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.
The tool is based on findings that certain search terms are good indicators of dengue activity, showing disease-related queries in near real time, the researchers said. Dengue is a mosquito-borne virus found in tropical areas of the world.
The research team was led by John Brownstein at the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program, and performed its study in Bolivia, Brazil, India, Indonesia and Singapore.
The dengue tool follows the methodology of Google Flu Trends, developed by Google and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which mines web search data for patterns that suggest seasonal flu activity.
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