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Is Google Trends a reliable tool for digital epidemiology? Insights from different clinical settings

Internet-derived information has been recently recognized as a valuable tool for epidemiological investigation. Google Trends, a Google Inc. portal, generates data on geographical and temporal patterns according to specified keywords. The aim of this study was to compare the reliability of Google Tr...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Cervellin, Gianfranco, Comelli, Ivan, Lippi, Giuseppe
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Atlantis Press 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7320449/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28756828
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jegh.2017.06.001
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author Cervellin, Gianfranco
Comelli, Ivan
Lippi, Giuseppe
author_facet Cervellin, Gianfranco
Comelli, Ivan
Lippi, Giuseppe
author_sort Cervellin, Gianfranco
collection PubMed
description Internet-derived information has been recently recognized as a valuable tool for epidemiological investigation. Google Trends, a Google Inc. portal, generates data on geographical and temporal patterns according to specified keywords. The aim of this study was to compare the reliability of Google Trends in different clinical settings, for both common diseases with lower media coverage, and for less common diseases attracting major media coverage. We carried out a search in Google Trends using the keywords “renal colic”, “epistaxis”, and “mushroom poisoning”, selected on the basis of available and reliable epidemiological data. Besides this search, we carried out a second search for three clinical conditions (i.e., “meningitis”, “Legionella Pneumophila pneumonia”, and “Ebola fever”), which recently received major focus by the Italian media. In our analysis, no correlation was found between data captured from Google Trends and epidemiology of renal colics, epistaxis and mushroom poisoning. Only when searching for the term “mushroom” alone the Google Trends search generated a seasonal pattern which almost overlaps with the epidemiological profile, but this was probably mostly due to searches for harvesting and cooking rather than to for poisoning. The Google Trends data also failed to reflect the geographical and temporary patterns of disease for meningitis, Legionella Pneumophila pneumonia and Ebola fever. The results of our study confirm that Google Trends has modest reliability for defining the epidemiology of relatively common diseases with minor media coverage, or relatively rare diseases with higher audience. Overall, Google Trends seems to be more influenced by the media clamor than by true epidemiological burden.
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spelling pubmed-73204492020-07-28 Is Google Trends a reliable tool for digital epidemiology? Insights from different clinical settings Cervellin, Gianfranco Comelli, Ivan Lippi, Giuseppe J Epidemiol Glob Health Article Internet-derived information has been recently recognized as a valuable tool for epidemiological investigation. Google Trends, a Google Inc. portal, generates data on geographical and temporal patterns according to specified keywords. The aim of this study was to compare the reliability of Google Trends in different clinical settings, for both common diseases with lower media coverage, and for less common diseases attracting major media coverage. We carried out a search in Google Trends using the keywords “renal colic”, “epistaxis”, and “mushroom poisoning”, selected on the basis of available and reliable epidemiological data. Besides this search, we carried out a second search for three clinical conditions (i.e., “meningitis”, “Legionella Pneumophila pneumonia”, and “Ebola fever”), which recently received major focus by the Italian media. In our analysis, no correlation was found between data captured from Google Trends and epidemiology of renal colics, epistaxis and mushroom poisoning. Only when searching for the term “mushroom” alone the Google Trends search generated a seasonal pattern which almost overlaps with the epidemiological profile, but this was probably mostly due to searches for harvesting and cooking rather than to for poisoning. The Google Trends data also failed to reflect the geographical and temporary patterns of disease for meningitis, Legionella Pneumophila pneumonia and Ebola fever. The results of our study confirm that Google Trends has modest reliability for defining the epidemiology of relatively common diseases with minor media coverage, or relatively rare diseases with higher audience. Overall, Google Trends seems to be more influenced by the media clamor than by true epidemiological burden. Atlantis Press 2017 2017-06-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7320449/ /pubmed/28756828 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jegh.2017.06.001 Text en © 2017 Ministry of Health, Saudi Arabia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Cervellin, Gianfranco
Comelli, Ivan
Lippi, Giuseppe
Is Google Trends a reliable tool for digital epidemiology? Insights from different clinical settings
title Is Google Trends a reliable tool for digital epidemiology? Insights from different clinical settings
title_full Is Google Trends a reliable tool for digital epidemiology? Insights from different clinical settings
title_fullStr Is Google Trends a reliable tool for digital epidemiology? Insights from different clinical settings
title_full_unstemmed Is Google Trends a reliable tool for digital epidemiology? Insights from different clinical settings
title_short Is Google Trends a reliable tool for digital epidemiology? Insights from different clinical settings
title_sort is google trends a reliable tool for digital epidemiology? insights from different clinical settings
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7320449/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28756828
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jegh.2017.06.001
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