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. 2015 Oct;105(10):2124-30.
doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2015.302696. Epub 2015 Aug 13.

Flu Near You: Crowdsourced Symptom Reporting Spanning 2 Influenza Seasons

Mark S Smolinski  1 , Adam W Crawley  1 , Kristin Baltrusaitis  1 , Rumi Chunara  1 , Jennifer M Olsen  1 , Oktawia Wójcik  1 , Mauricio Santillana  1 , Andre Nguyen  1 , John S Brownstein  1
Affiliations

Flu Near You: Crowdsourced Symptom Reporting Spanning 2 Influenza Seasons

Mark S Smolinski et al. Am J Public Health. 2015 Oct.

Abstract

Objectives: We summarized Flu Near You (FNY) data from the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 influenza seasons in the United States.

Methods: FNY collects limited demographic characteristic information upon registration, and prompts users each Monday to report symptoms of influenza-like illness (ILI) experienced during the previous week. We calculated the descriptive statistics and rates of ILI for the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 seasons. We compared raw and noise-filtered ILI rates with ILI rates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ILINet surveillance system.

Results: More than 61 000 participants submitted at least 1 report during the 2012-2013 season, totaling 327 773 reports. Nearly 40 000 participants submitted at least 1 report during the 2013-2014 season, totaling 336 933 reports. Rates of ILI as reported by FNY tracked closely with ILINet in both timing and magnitude.

Conclusions: With increased participation, FNY has the potential to serve as a viable complement to existing outpatient, hospital-based, and laboratory surveillance systems. Although many established systems have the benefits of specificity and credibility, participatory systems offer advantages in the areas of speed, sensitivity, and scalability.

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Figures

FIGURE 1—
FIGURE 1—
Flu Near You mobile interface.
FIGURE 2—
FIGURE 2—
Comparison between report-adjusted FNY, noise‐filtered FNY, and CDC influenza-like illness rates for flu seasons (a) 2012–2013 and (b) 2013–2014: United States. Note. CDC = Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; FNY = Flu Near You; ILI = influenza-like illness; RMSE = root-mean-square error. For context, ILI rates obtained from Google Flu Trends and the raw FNY are shown.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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