Infodemiology
Infodemiology, as defined by Gunther Eysenbach in the early 2000s, was a new area of science research that focuses on scanning the Internet for user-contributed health-related content, with the ultimate goal of improving public health.
Eysenbach first used the term in the context of measuring and predicting the quality of health information on the Web.
He later included in his definition methods and techniques which are designed to automatically measure and track health information "demand" as well as "supply" on the Internet with the overarching goal of informing public health policy and practice. In 2013, the Infovigil Project was launched in an effort to bring the research community together to help realize this goal. It is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Eysenbach demonstrated his point by showing a correlation between flu-related searches on Google and flu-incidence data. The method is shown to be better and more timely than traditional syndromic surveillance methods such as reports by sentinel physicians.
Researchers have applied an infodemiological approach to studying the spread of HIV/AIDS, SARS and influenza, vaccination uptake, antibiotics consumption, the incidence of multiple sclerosis, patterns of alcohol consumption, the efficacy of using the social web for personalization of health treatment, the contexts of status epilepticus patients, and the effectiveness of the Great American Smokeout anti-smoking awareness event. Applications outside the field of health care include urban planning and the study of economic trends and voter preferences.
