News Releases & Announcements
An analysis by University of Ottawa professor shows online tools could help identify disease outbreaks sooner
OTTAWA, March 12, 2009 — The Internet may have contained early warning signs of Canada’s recent listeriosis outbreak, according to an analysis co-authored by Dr. Kumanan Wilson, associate professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Public Health Policy and a Scientist at the Ottawa Health Research Institute.
The analysis, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, shows that Internet searches in 2008 using the word “listeriosis” spiked in mid- to late July, almost a month before the outbreak was publicly declared.
“Internet scanning represents an important advancement in health surveillance, and search-term surveillance is a provocative new tool that has much potential. But both these tools merit further evaluation,” conclude Dr. Wilson and Dr. John Brownstein, who is affiliated with Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. “Most importantly, these technologies may provide significant benefits to outbreak control at local, national and international levels, ultimately reducing the health consequences of these outbreaks.”
The World Health Organization relies on Web-based data sources for daily disease surveillance. Tools such as the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, developed by Health Canada, and Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases are used by public health officials. HealthMap (www.healthmap.org) is a free, real-time system that maps reports on emerging diseases across the globe. Applications such as Google Flu Trends, which examines trends in search terms that correlate with disease, represent an emerging new area of surveillance.
Although these tools can be useful in health surveillance, there are limitations such as signal overload or false indicators of an outbreak, risk communication problems for public health officials and lack of Internet access in developing countries.
For more information, pleae visit: http://www.ohri.ca/newsroom/newsstory.asp?ID=167
