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Healthcare professionals’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza in Finland 2011‐2016—Can we detect influenza epidemics with specific online searches?
BACKGROUND: Healthcare professionals (HCPs) search medical information during their clinical work using Internet sources. In Finland, Physician's Databases (PD) serve as an Internet medical portal aimed at HCPs. Influenza epidemics appear seasonal outbreaks causing public health concern. Oselta...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6586180/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30843371 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/irv.12640 |
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author | Pesälä, Samuli Virtanen, Mikko J. Mukka, Milla Ylilammi, Kimi Mustonen, Pekka Kaila, Minna Helve, Otto |
author_facet | Pesälä, Samuli Virtanen, Mikko J. Mukka, Milla Ylilammi, Kimi Mustonen, Pekka Kaila, Minna Helve, Otto |
author_sort | Pesälä, Samuli |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Healthcare professionals (HCPs) search medical information during their clinical work using Internet sources. In Finland, Physician's Databases (PD) serve as an Internet medical portal aimed at HCPs. Influenza epidemics appear seasonal outbreaks causing public health concern. Oseltamivir can be used to treat influenza. Little is known about HCPs’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza from dedicated online medical portals and whether queries could be used as an additional source of information for disease surveillance when detecting influenza epidemics. METHODS: We compared HCPs’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza from PD to influenza diagnoses from the primary healthcare register in Finland 2011‐2016. The Moving Epidemic Method (MEM) calculated the starts of influenza epidemics. Laboratory reports of influenza A and influenza B were assessed. Paired differences compared queries, diagnoses, and laboratory reports by using starting weeks. Kendall's correlation test assessed the season‐to‐season similarity. RESULTS: We found that PD and the primary healthcare register showed visually similar patterns annually. Paired differences in the mean showed that influenza epidemics based on queries on oseltamivir started earlier than epidemics based on diagnoses by −0.80 weeks (95% CI: −1.0, 0.0) with high correlation (τ = 0.943). Queries on influenza preceded queries on oseltamivir by −0.80 weeks (95% CI: −1.2, 0.0) and diagnoses by −1.60 weeks (95% CI: −1.8, −1.0). CONCLUSIONS: HCPs’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza from Internet medical databases correlated with register diagnoses of influenza. Therefore, they should be considered as a supplementary source of information for disease surveillance when detecting influenza epidemics. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6586180 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-65861802019-07-01 Healthcare professionals’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza in Finland 2011‐2016—Can we detect influenza epidemics with specific online searches? Pesälä, Samuli Virtanen, Mikko J. Mukka, Milla Ylilammi, Kimi Mustonen, Pekka Kaila, Minna Helve, Otto Influenza Other Respir Viruses Original Articles BACKGROUND: Healthcare professionals (HCPs) search medical information during their clinical work using Internet sources. In Finland, Physician's Databases (PD) serve as an Internet medical portal aimed at HCPs. Influenza epidemics appear seasonal outbreaks causing public health concern. Oseltamivir can be used to treat influenza. Little is known about HCPs’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza from dedicated online medical portals and whether queries could be used as an additional source of information for disease surveillance when detecting influenza epidemics. METHODS: We compared HCPs’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza from PD to influenza diagnoses from the primary healthcare register in Finland 2011‐2016. The Moving Epidemic Method (MEM) calculated the starts of influenza epidemics. Laboratory reports of influenza A and influenza B were assessed. Paired differences compared queries, diagnoses, and laboratory reports by using starting weeks. Kendall's correlation test assessed the season‐to‐season similarity. RESULTS: We found that PD and the primary healthcare register showed visually similar patterns annually. Paired differences in the mean showed that influenza epidemics based on queries on oseltamivir started earlier than epidemics based on diagnoses by −0.80 weeks (95% CI: −1.0, 0.0) with high correlation (τ = 0.943). Queries on influenza preceded queries on oseltamivir by −0.80 weeks (95% CI: −1.2, 0.0) and diagnoses by −1.60 weeks (95% CI: −1.8, −1.0). CONCLUSIONS: HCPs’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza from Internet medical databases correlated with register diagnoses of influenza. Therefore, they should be considered as a supplementary source of information for disease surveillance when detecting influenza epidemics. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019-03-06 2019-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6586180/ /pubmed/30843371 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/irv.12640 Text en © 2019 The Authors. Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Original Articles Pesälä, Samuli Virtanen, Mikko J. Mukka, Milla Ylilammi, Kimi Mustonen, Pekka Kaila, Minna Helve, Otto Healthcare professionals’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza in Finland 2011‐2016—Can we detect influenza epidemics with specific online searches? |
title | Healthcare professionals’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza in Finland 2011‐2016—Can we detect influenza epidemics with specific online searches? |
title_full | Healthcare professionals’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza in Finland 2011‐2016—Can we detect influenza epidemics with specific online searches? |
title_fullStr | Healthcare professionals’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza in Finland 2011‐2016—Can we detect influenza epidemics with specific online searches? |
title_full_unstemmed | Healthcare professionals’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza in Finland 2011‐2016—Can we detect influenza epidemics with specific online searches? |
title_short | Healthcare professionals’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza in Finland 2011‐2016—Can we detect influenza epidemics with specific online searches? |
title_sort | healthcare professionals’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza in finland 2011‐2016—can we detect influenza epidemics with specific online searches? |
topic | Original Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6586180/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30843371 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/irv.12640 |
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