Google has started monitoring dengue trends in the Philippines as it expanded its "Google Dengue Trends" service to measure disease in countries around the world.
Vikram Sahai, an engineer at Google.org, said the Philippines is one of five new countries covered by the monitoring.
"We’re adding five new countries to Google Dengue Trends: Argentina, Mexico, Philippines, Thailand, and Venezuela. This brings our grand total to 10 countries where we provide dengue estimates in near-real time based on search activity," Sahai said in a blog post.
Sahai said that in addition to country level estimates, Google.org can offer some state level estimates as well for both Argentina and Mexico.
But Sahai said the data, while freely available for download, is based on “experimental" models which means they have not been officially validated against health ministry dengue data for these countries.
"When and where possible, we will officially validate models in comparison against confirmed publicly available dengue data," Sahai said.
Sahai noted it can take weeks and months to collect dengue data through traditional surveillance mechanisms.
"It’s our hope that the timely information (updated daily!) from Google Dengue Trends will be useful to public health authorities and individuals around the world as an earlier indicator of disease activity and a complement to existing surveillance systems. The sooner you know that there are dengue-spreading mosquitoes in action near you, the sooner you can take steps to prevent infection," Sahai said.
As of Thursday, Google's Dengue Trends for the Philippines shows "low" activity. Dengue activity was "moderate" in July and climbed to "high" and "intense" in August before returning to "high" in September and "moderate" in October. — TJD,
