Freely available data sources, namely Wikipedia, can be effective in predicting and surveying infectious disease outbreaks, according to a study in PLOS Computational Biology.
Researchers analyzed Wikipedia pageviews of disease-related articles and official disease incidence reports to determine how closely pageviews fell in line with officially forecasted diseases. They tracked 14 disease locations.
According to the analysis, there was an increase in pageviews of a certain infectious disease four weeks before health offices declared an outbreak.
The researchers concluded, "we have established the utility of Wikipedia access logs for global disease monitoring and forecasting."
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