Google has found that analyzing aggregated Google search data can estimate future flu activity in a state as much as two weeks faster than traditional government disease surveillance systems.
The company published its findings this week as Google Flu Trends, which noted a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms.
Observers say the ability to predict disease outbreaks could boost Google's health care efforts. The company launched its Google Health online personal health record to consumers in May after announcing to great fanfare seven months earlier its intent to enter the health care market.
In its flu trends report, Google compared its queries with data from a flu surveillance system managed by the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and found that certain search queries become more popular during flu season, the company noted in a blog post . By counting these queries, Google said it can estimate how much flu is spreading in various regions of the country.
Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325
Surviving Windows is easier than you think… MKS offers the power of an integrated all-in-one environment and provides you with the Power of UNIX on Windows Learn More
Brought to you by:
Free books
We have 5 copies of these two new books to give to some lucky readers. The deadline for entries is November 30, 2009.
AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.
In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases
built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC
technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability
and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.
On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.
jfruh
pasmith
Esther Schindler
mikelgan
David Strom
sjvn
Sandra Henry-Stocker
Quick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.
