Yet another example of the all-seeing nature of Google’s digital domination was unveiled this week with the launch of Google Flu Trends, a new application from the internet giant’s charitable arm Google.org that provides information on the spread of the infection by tracking individual Flu-related internet searches such as “aching muscles”, “headaches”, “fever” and so on.
According to data mined from their archives, a Google mapping of the past 5 years’ flu-related searches almost exactly matches the statistics of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The crucial difference being, that the digital data Google provides could be accessed, analysed and acted upon quicker than traditional methods of tracking disease and infection. According to an article in the IHT, there are 36,000 flu-related deaths in the US each year – a far higher figure than expected for this uninitiated reader, and one that underlines the fact that an ability to respond and react quicker to regional flu epidemics could potentially save lives.
Any such examples of the intersection of health and technology in innovative ways are useful to informing the BBC World Service Trust’s work. Health is a major theme of our work, and an area in which we have used innovation to get our message across. A highly successful mobile ringtone campaign to promote condom use in India this year took advantage of the rapid expansion of mobile telephony in the developing world – and has so far reached 100 million people across the country.
The next step will be to look at ways of expanding and building on knowledge of how mobile telephony can be used in health development, and to continue to innovate. For Google, this week’s announcement is apparently also just the start, of what the NY Times’ Miguel Helft refers to as “an apparently fruitful marriage of mob behaviour and medicine”, as they plan “to explore other countries, languages, and diseases in future”.
So, are the possibilities boundless? The power of the information database Google has access to is well known and documented, and researchers have often spoken of the ability of the web to help make predictions. But from a development perspective, what useful services could be provided?
It is all very well tracking Flu outbreaks in the United States, but would the same work for HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa? Many countries and regions in the developing world have little or no access to the internet due to lack of infrastructure, so along with the all important rapid response factor, the sheer body of data needed to build and make predictions such as these is not available.
However, a look at the Google Trends service itself is an interesting story in its own right. A search on HIV/AIDS reveals that the top 7 nations for traffic under “HIV/AIDS” today are African, with Uganda and Ethiopia topping out. The same search for Flu brings up a top ten list of mostly western nations including the US and Canada (still allowing for any skewed results after Google.org’s announcement). Indonesia is the only country to feature on both lists.
In the Google tradition, yesterday’s announcement was emphasised very much as an experimental project. This latest initiative is in conjunction with Google.org’s “predict and prevent” initiative focusing on the emergence and rapid response to infectious diseases.
Whatever the potential limitations, it is always good to hear of positive uses of Google’s unparalleled data access, and to keep working on building innovative tools of information technology for humanitarian and development goals.
