A recent article by Avinash Patwardhan and Robert Bilkovski entitled “Comparison: Flu Prescription Sales Data from a Retail Pharmacy in the US with Google Flu Trends and US ILINet (CDC) Data as Flu Activity Indicator,” published in PLOS ONE online journal, discusses the value of using prescription sales as a useful data source for syndromic surveillance. In their study, Patwardhan and Bilkovski compared flu prescription sales to Google Flu Trends and ILINet data with the result of a .92 correlation coefficient for Google Flu Trends and .97 correlation coefficient for ILINet data. Read the full article by following the link below and learn more about this study of converging data sources for syndromic surveillance.
Full article: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone….
Feel free to post and share your thoughts on using prescription sales for syndromic surveillance or other types of non-traditional data that may be of value for promoting fast and reliable information about population health and emerging health threats.
Tags: ILI, data, pharmacy, surveillance, syndromic
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