As soon as the leaves fall from the trees the inevitable flu virus starts to spread. The symptoms are often the same, head-aches, coughs, fevers, sore throats and muscular pains. Google noticed an increase in the use of search terms for flu related symptoms. The data directly related to known outbreak areas and the results were in real time as the searches were taking place while someone was ill. This has given rise to Google creating an early warning system which actually tracks the spread of flu outbreaks across the USA. The system is called Google Flu Trends and it can be found at www.google.org/flutrends .

Tests of the new system by the company’s philanthropic unit have so far suggested that the system may be able to detect regional outbreaks 7 to 10 days before they are reported by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

It’s being reported that this amazing tool could help public health experts increase their response time to a potential flu outbreak, allowing the vulnerable and weak to be inoculated before the levels of risk become too high. This could really save lives and stop the spread of disease.

“The earlier the warning, the earlier prevention and control measures can be put in place, and this could prevent cases of influenza,” said Lyn Finelli, lead for surveillance at the influenza division of the CDC.

“In theory, we could use this stream of information to learn about other disease trends as well,” said Philip M. Polgreen, assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa and a co-author of the study based on Yahoo’s data.

A website called www.whoissick.org has been trying to do this very same thing by inviting people to report about their ailments. The results are superimposed on a map. The problem is that they do not have the levels of online exposure that Google receives and as a result they have a very small level of visitor traffic.

Google.org has also backed the HealthMap project which is affiliated with the Children’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School. The system scour the web for news, articles, blog posts and electronic newsletter to a worldwide create map of new diseases.

Google Flu Trends uses the world’s largest source of user generated data in order to track and map Flu trends. As with all things Google, if this pilot project is successful it could see the start of a new age of preventative medicine, allowing information to fight the spread of disease.