Abstract
The Internet is a common source of medical information and has created novel surveillance opportunities. We assessed the potential for Internet-based surveillance of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and examined the extent to which it reflects trends in hospitalizations and news coverage. Google queries were a useful predictor of hospitalizations for methicillin-resistant S. aureus infections.
Highlights
The Internet is a common source of medical information and has created novel surveillance opportunities
Given the lack of comprehensive surveillance, we examined whether Google search data might productively supplement existing systems to track the changing epidemiology of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections
We report an Internet protocol (IP) surveillance model for MRSA
Summary
The Internet is a common source of medical information and has created novel surveillance opportunities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks a limited group of infections defined as invasive through the Active Bacterial Core (ABC) surveillance system reported from 9 regions These include MRSA infections at normally sterile sites. Internet Queries and MRSA Surveillance the effect of the 2007 CDC report on MRSA awareness, we tested 2 indicator variables: 1 to capture the spike in search activity during the 4th quarter of 2007, and 1 to account for higher levels of search activity in subsequent quarters [10] These 2 indicators enable the model baseline to differ during the quarters before, during, and after the 4th quarter of 2007, while keeping the relationship between hospitalization rates and Internet searches and news counts the same during the 3 periods. Because evidence has shown that invasive hospital-associated MRSA infections decreased during the study period [13], the generally upward secular
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