Correlates of influenza disease activity in the information environment: An exploratory approach in the Philippine setting

• Main Authors: Calvo, Sofia Adriana L., Fu, Jonalyn D.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2016
• Subjects: Influenza; Information filtering systems; Surveillance detection; Bayesian statistical decision theory; Statistics and Probability
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/14913
• Institution: De La Salle University

Influenza poses substantial burden. The virus affects an individual's respiratory tract and may lead to serious complications resulting to death. Thus, a reliable system is essential to track influenza activity. The discovery of internet-based surveillance systems or information environment is fundamental since traditional influenza surveillance systems are sometimes unavailable or insufficient and are usually untimely and costly. Inspired by this, the study explored correlations between traditional influenza case and death surveillance systems in the Philippines, from 2011-2015, and the information environment through Google search activity. Bayesian hierarchical statistical frameworks were applied to perform the task, both with and without explicit considerations of influenza season. Results show that Google search volumes are more correlated to recorded number of cases as compared to counts of deaths, invariant to seasonality. These results may be useful in developing early warning systems for monitoring influenza activity.