Drudge is reporting that Google plans on releasing a tool to the federal government that uses data gathered from web searches for flu related keywords to notify health agencies where an outbreak might be happening. Lets for a minute ignore the privacy implications of this project and think of the potential benefits of an early warning system that notices patterns as soon as people start getting the sniffles.
Google explains its methodology:
We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and discovered that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States.
During the 2007-2008 flu season, an early version of Google Flu Trends was used to share results each week with the Epidemiology and Prevention Branch of the Influenza Division at CDC. Across each of the nine surveillance regions of the United States, we were able to accurately estimate current flu levels one to two weeks faster than published CDC reports.
CDC uses a variety of methods to track influenza across the United States each year. One method relies on a network of more than 1500 doctors who see 16 million patients each year. The doctors keep track of the percentage of their patients who have an influenza-like illness, also known as an “ILI percentage”. CDC and state health departments collect and aggregate this data each week, providing a good indicator of overall flu activity across the United States.
So why bother with estimates from aggregated search queries? It turns out that traditional flu surveillance systems take 1-2 weeks to collect and release surveillance data, but Google search queries can be automatically counted very quickly. By making our flu estimates available each day, Google Flu Trends may provide an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza.
Developing at Drudge…
Project page: Google Flu Trends…
Today’s Wall Street Journal is profiling a shopping cart sanitizing system, dubbed PureCart™, the makers of which claim an over 99% kill rate of common pathogens that could be present on the carts. Germaphobic parents can now forget about bringing wet wipes to the store in a futile attempt to clean every object and crevice their kids can get their hands on.
Researchers at Maastricht University in Holland developed an innovative technology that uses functional MRI and computer software to reveal specific details of the hearing process. In gathered fMRI data scientists were able to identify who the subject was listening to and what that person was saying. Even though the study involved only three speakers pronouncing three simple sounds, the technology paves the way for future research into understanding how the brain processes auditory information.
According to research presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2008, a collaborative project to develop a device to harness the energy produced by the heart to power an implantable pacemaker is generating great deal of promise. A study of the SIMM, a catheter-mounted generator that can be placed on a conventional pacemaker or defibrillator lead, which uses balloons within the right atrium and ventricle to generate electricity, shows that the technology to develop self powering implantable cardiac devices may become clinically feasible.
Medica 2008 conference in Düsseldorf is next week, but all sorts of companies are already showcasing their devices and technologies. InterVene Ltd. out of Staveley, UK has announced that the company will be presenting to the world its manually retractable hypodermic safety needle that goes on all sorts of commonly-used luer lock or luer slip syringes via an extrinsic attachment. Interestingly, despite this arrangement the device has only 0.03ml of dead space, “significantly less than the potential residual contents of the needle itself and well within the requirements of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) for deadspace,” the company says. The company also proclaims that InterVene Safety Needle is “the world”s first manually retractable, hypodermic safety needle.” But we are not 100% sure about that, to be frank.
PBA Galleries in San Francisco will be hosting an auction selling off the medical and science library of Dr Gerald I. Sugarman. The good doctor must have been a bit of a quirk, judging by the morbid oddities and strange selections in the collection.
