It’s flu season, so get ready! The fine people at Google.org, (not com) are concerned for your health and decided to create Google Flu Trends. This is a great idea that uses Google Trends to search Google’s database of queries specific to flu-related terms. With so many people resorting to online medical help, Google Flu Trends claims to be very accurate, and in some cases, they can detect new trends of the flu before sources like the CDC. According to Miguel Helft’s New York Times article, this idea is not new and is actually the same concept used by the CDC and other disease-related organizations; however, Google Flu Trends appears to be the first public project that uses the powerful database of a search engine to track a disease. Oh how we love Cyberspace!
(Via Brian)
Posted by somethingincyberspace 