Abstract
BackgroundHealthcare professionals (HCPs) search medical information during their clinical work using Internet sources. In Finland, Physician's Databases (PD) serve as an Internet medical portal aimed at HCPs. Influenza epidemics appear seasonal outbreaks causing public health concern. Oseltamivir can be used to treat influenza. Little is known about HCPs’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza from dedicated online medical portals and whether queries could be used as an additional source of information for disease surveillance when detecting influenza epidemics.MethodsWe compared HCPs’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza from PD to influenza diagnoses from the primary healthcare register in Finland 2011‐2016. The Moving Epidemic Method (MEM) calculated the starts of influenza epidemics. Laboratory reports of influenza A and influenza B were assessed. Paired differences compared queries, diagnoses, and laboratory reports by using starting weeks. Kendall's correlation test assessed the season‐to‐season similarity.ResultsWe found that PD and the primary healthcare register showed visually similar patterns annually. Paired differences in the mean showed that influenza epidemics based on queries on oseltamivir started earlier than epidemics based on diagnoses by −0.80 weeks (95% CI: −1.0, 0.0) with high correlation (τ = 0.943). Queries on influenza preceded queries on oseltamivir by −0.80 weeks (95% CI: −1.2, 0.0) and diagnoses by −1.60 weeks (95% CI: −1.8, −1.0).ConclusionsHCPs’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza from Internet medical databases correlated with register diagnoses of influenza. Therefore, they should be considered as a supplementary source of information for disease surveillance when detecting influenza epidemics.
Highlights
Accessing the Internet enables users, including healthcare pro‐ fessionals (HCPs), to search medical information on the web
We carried out a register‐based study by collecting weekly log data on the number of queries on oseltamivir and influenza from Physician's Databases (PD), in order to compare logs to influenza diagnoses (J09‐11 according to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision [ICD‐10] disease classification code system[9] and R80 in the International Classification of Primary Care, Second Edition [ICPC2] coding system23) and laboratory reports of influenza A and influenza B found from National Infectious Diseases Register (NIDR)
We analyzed the starting weeks of the epidemic periods consisting of queries on oseltamivir, influenza diagnoses, queries on influenza, and laboratory reports of influenza A and B pairwise comprising a total of ten pairs
Summary
Accessing the Internet enables users, including healthcare pro‐ fessionals (HCPs), to search medical information on the web. In Finland, Physician's Databases (PD) serve as an Internet medical portal aimed at HCPs. Influenza epidemics appear seasonal outbreaks causing public health concern. Methods: We compared HCPs’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza from PD to influ‐ enza diagnoses from the primary healthcare register in Finland 2011‐2016. Paired differences in the mean showed that influenza epidemics based on queries on oseltamivir started earlier than epidemics based on diagnoses by −0.80 weeks (95% CI: −1.0, 0.0) with high correlation (τ = 0.943). Conclusions: HCPs’ queries on oseltamivir and influenza from Internet medical data‐ bases correlated with register diagnoses of influenza. They should be con‐ sidered as a supplementary source of information for disease surveillance when detecting influenza epidemics
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