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Correlation between National Influenza Surveillance Data and Google Trends in South Korea

PLoS ONEPublished 5 December 2013Open access
Sung Jin Cho, Chang Hwan Sohn, Min Woo Jo, Soo-Yong Shin, Jae-Ho Lee, Seung Mok Ryoo
Citations133
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score0.80
SNIP1.07
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TL;DR

It is found that the Google Trends for certain queries using the survey on influenza correlated with national surveillance data in South Korea, but was insufficient for the use of predictive models, such as Google Flu Trends.

Abstract

In our study, we found that the Google Trends for certain queries using the survey on influenza correlated with national surveillance data in South Korea. The results of this study showed that Google Trends in the Korean language can be used as complementary data for influenza surveillance but was insufficient for the use of predictive models, such as Google Flu Trends.

Keywords

Medicine