Home
Internet
Internet News
Wikipedia Traffic Can Help Predict Next Disease Outbreak: Study

Wikipedia Traffic Can Help Predict Next Disease Outbreak: Study

By Indo-Asian News Service | Updated: 19 November 2014 16:34 IST

Click Here to Add Gadgets360 As A Trusted Source

An increase in visits to Wikipedia pages about a disease can predict its next outbreak, a study suggests.

Researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US examined 14 infectious disease outbreaks and used Wikipedia traffic data to compare if they could predict upsurges of diseases.

The team was able to forecast all the outbreaks up to 28 days in advance, just looking at the page view trends.

Internet Discussion

Explore More...

"A global disease-forecasting system will change the way we respond to epidemics. In the same way we check the weather each morning, individuals and public health officials can monitor disease incidence and plan for the future based on today's forecast," said researcher Sara Del Valle from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

For the study, influenza outbreaks in the United States, Poland, Japan and Thailand, dengue fever in Brazil and Thailand, and tuberculosis in China and Thailand were tracked.

Except for the Chinese tuberculosis upsurge in China, the researchers were able to anticipate all the diseases.

The study was published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

Comments

Get your daily dose of tech news, reviews, and insights, in under 80 characters on Gadgets 360 Turbo. Connect with fellow tech lovers on our Forum. Follow us on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News for instant updates. Catch all the action on our YouTube channel.