Internet Searches May Help In Estimating Prevalence Of Non-Communicable Disease Risk.

a study published online March 24 in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health suggests that search data may useful in estimating the prevalence of certain non-communicable diseases in populations. The researchers utilized Google Trends to pick search terms and compared them to CDC data on state-based prevalences of risk factors for predicting non-communicable disease, such as amount of exercise, smoking, hypertension, heart disease or diabetes. Over the course of a year, the search trends, broken down by state, were strongly correlated to the CDC’s measured estimates of disease risk from population data. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/us-searchers-disease-risk-idUSKBN0MS2Y420150401