Google's Pandemic Prowess

Having conquered most other aspects of our life, it makes sense that Google Inc. would give governments a run for their money tracking potential pandemics.

Google Flu Trends, launched a year ago, works at least as well as government monitoring services following the spread of swine flu, New Zealand researchers found.

The free Google service is operated by the philanthropic arm of the tech giant. Its own analysis of last flu season shows that its stats correlated very closely with official U.S. data, according to Google.org blog. And Google says it tracks these trends in (near) real time in 20 countries.

Those boasts intrigued public health researchers in New Zealand, who found that the claims were pretty accurate.

"The patterns from Google Flu Trends were closely aligned" with two national surveillance systems for cases of flu-like illness in New Zealand, researchers wrote in the journal Eurosurveillance.

"A major benefit of Google Flu Trends is that it is free and that it is likely to provide some indication of when the incidence of (flu-like illnesses) has started to increase in the community and is likely to have peaked," the researchers added.