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Surveillance Tools Emerging From Search Engines and Social Media Data for Determining Eye Disease Patterns.

ABSTRACT: IMPORTANCE:Internet-based search engine and social media data may provide a novel complementary source for better understanding the epidemiologic factors of infectious eye diseases, which could better inform eye health care and disease prevention. OBJECTIVE:To assess whether data from internet-based social media and search engines are associated with objective clinic-based diagnoses of conjunctivitis. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS:Data from encounters of 4143 patients diagnosed with conjunctivitis from June 3, 2012, to April 26, 2014, at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, were analyzed using Spearman rank correlation of each weekly observation to compare demographics and seasonality of nonallergic conjunctivitis with allergic conjunctivitis. Data for patient encounters with diagnoses for glaucoma and influenza were also obtained for the same period and compared with conjunctivitis. Temporal patterns of Twitter and Google web search data, geolocated to the United States and associated with these clinical diagnoses, were compared with the clinical encounters. The a priori hypothesis was that weekly internet-based searches and social media posts about conjunctivitis may reflect the true weekly clinical occurrence of conjunctivitis. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES:Weekly total clinical diagnoses at UCSF of nonallergic conjunctivitis, allergic conjunctivitis, glaucoma, and influenza were compared using Spearman rank correlation with equivalent weekly data on Tweets related to disease or disease-related keyword searches obtained from Google Trends. RESULTS:Seasonality of clinical diagnoses of nonallergic conjunctivitis among the 4143 patients (2364 females [57.1%] and 1776 males [42.9%]) with 5816 conjunctivitis encounters at UCSF correlated strongly with results of Google searches in the United States for the term pink eye (?, 0.68 [95% CI, 0.52 to 0.78]; P?

SUBMITTER: Deiner MS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5227006 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Surveillance Tools Emerging From Search Engines and Social Media Data for Determining Eye Disease Patterns.

Deiner Michael S MS Lietman Thomas M TM McLeod Stephen D SD Chodosh James J Porco Travis C TC

JAMA ophthalmology 20160901 9

<h4>Importance</h4>Internet-based search engine and social media data may provide a novel complementary source for better understanding the epidemiologic factors of infectious eye diseases, which could better inform eye health care and disease prevention.<h4>Objective</h4>To assess whether data from internet-based social media and search engines are associated with objective clinic-based diagnoses of conjunctivitis.<h4>Design, setting, and participants</h4>Data from encounters of 4143 patients d ...[more]

PMID: 27416554

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Dataset Information

Surveillance Tools Emerging From Search Engines and Social Media Data for Determining Eye Disease Patterns.

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Surveillance Tools Emerging From Search Engines and Social Media Data for Determining Eye Disease Patterns.

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