Annotated Bibliography Worksheet
- Bibliographical Information
Lu, F. S., Hou, S., Baltrusaitis, K., Shah, M., Leskovec, J., Hawkins, J., … & Zink, A. (2018). Accurate influenza monitoring and forecasting using novel internet data streams: a case study in the Boston Metropolis. JMIR public health and surveillance, 4(1), e4.
https://publichealth.jmir.org/2018/1/e4/
- Summary of Article
This article says that the influenza outbreak poses a lot of challenges to the health sector around the world and may lead to the death of many people. Therefore, it is essential to create accurate systems that can track influenza activity to ensure that the communities and healthcare facilities get prepared to take action in case of an outbreak (Yang et al. 2017). This article deals with accurate influenza monitoring and forecasting using novel internet data streams, a case study of Boston. The study combined internet-real-time based data sources such as Google and tweets and city-level spatial resolutions.
- Evaluation of Article
The article says that to detect the influenza activities in Boston, the study tested the potential of tweets, Google electronic health records, and crowded influenza reports (Yang et al. 2017). Auto-regression with general online information used to monitor influenza at the national level, if combined with the other mentioned sources of data, can help forecast and control influenza at the city level. The study also used an ensemble-based method that combines data from various data sources, and it provided the most accurate and healthy results.
- Reflection on Application to Practice
The study proves that internet sources of data can be a useful source of data if they get combined with a vigorous and informed method (Yang et al. 2017). The results from the sources can be used as an early indicator of an influenza outbreak, and the required measures get taken. Therefore, internet is an appropriate source of health data that can be used in society.
References
Yang, S., Santillana, M., Brownstein, J. S., Gray, J., Richardson, S., & Kou, S. C. (2017). Using electronic health records and Internet search information for accurate influenza forecasting. BMC infectious diseases, 17(1), 332.