Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Search engines and social media can forecast disease outbreaks

This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

Internet search engine queries and social media data can be early warning signals, creating a real-time surveillance system for disease forecasting, says a recent University of Waterloo study.

Using the example of COVID-19, researchers found there was an association between the disease’s prevalence and search engine queries and social media posts.

“The general public tends to use internet searches and social media for health information, and especially so during global epidemics,” said Dr. Yang (Rena) Yang, a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Public Health Sciences at Waterloo. “These behaviour patterns can be used by public health authorities to develop a real-time surveillance system to flag when diseases are spiking or waning or respond quickly to emerging infectious diseases.” 

The team extracted symptom keywords from Google Trends and Twitter data in Canada from January to March 2020. These keywords included cough, runny nose, sore throat, shortness of breath, fever, headache, body ache, and fatigue on Google Trends. On Twitter, researchers looked at COVID-19-related hashtags, such as pneumonia, cough, fever, running nose and breath. They then cross-checked the information against COVID-19 data from the COVID-19 Canada Open Data Working Group.

The researchers found that search terms related to COVID-19 symptoms strongly correlated with daily COVID-19 cases with a time lag of between one and 13 days, suggesting that these tools can serve as early warning signals for digital disease surveillance in real time. The sophisticated machine learning model used for forecasting in this study performed better with Google Trends than with Twitter data.

Dr. Zahid Butt, lead investigator of the study and an assistant professor in the School of Public Health Sciences at Waterloo, noted there are challenges in modelling due to the noise from self-generated data, not to mention the ability to identify relevant keywords of an emerging infectious disease.

“Our future research will aim to systemically identify and organize pertinent symptom keywords for emerging diseases, even before they are commonly recognized or reported,” Butt said. “These systems have the potential to assist in epidemiological control and monitor public perceptions of the disease, as well as forecast trends in outbreaks. A multifaceted strategy that uses multiple data sources and multimodal modelling would help provide accurate and comprehensive emerging disease surveillance.”

The study, Digital Disease Surveillance for Emerging Infectious Diseases: An Early Warning System Using the Internet and Social Media Data for COVID-19 Forecasting in Canada, appears in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics and was authored by Waterloo's Dr. Yang (Rena) Yang, Shu-Feng Tsao, Mohammad Basri, Dr. Helen Chen and Dr. Zahid Butt.

Take a language crash course with a robot

Do you have 1 hour of spare time, a desire to learn some vocabulary and phrases in a new language with a robot? The Active & Interactive Robotics Lab (AIR) Lab and the Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Lab are running a study entitled "Language crash course with a robot" and are seeking participants.

Leading the study are Yue Hu, Principal Investigator, Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, Kerstin Dautenhahn, Co-Investigator, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and student investigator Victoria Yang, MASc student, Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering.

"We are interested in developing a robot capable of promoting language learning," study organizers write. "This study is part of Victoria Yang’s Master’s thesis and aims at validating the robot’s capability within a language learning setting." 

The study will be conducted in E7-3431. The session will last about one hour. This study involves doing a learning activity with a Maple robot. Prior to the start of experiment, participants will complete a consent form and a pre-session questionnaire on demographics (age, gender, education), personality, and language familiarity (how many languages they know, which ones, level of proficiency of each). After the experiment, participants will complete a post-session questionnaire about your perception of the experience and then do a short quiz to test learning. Participants will be video recorded for the entire study session.

Remuneration of $15 in gift card or cash will be given to participants. The study is open to students, faculty and staff. Anyone over 18 years old may participate in this study.

Chek out the registration link for more information.

Contact Victoria Yang at y546yang@uwaterloo.ca with your questions.

This study has been reviewed and received clearance from a University of Waterloo research ethics board. This study is funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) grant.

Have your say in the regional hospital survey; other notes

"As our cities and region evolve, our health care system must evolve with it," says a note from Kelly McManus, Associate Vice-President, Community Relations and Events. "Grand River Hospital and St. Mary’s General Hospital are partnering to build a new joint hospital and modernize hospital facilities, so our community has access to the highest quality care, technology and infrastructure to be healthy, now and in the future."

A site selection committee has been struck, and they are seeking feedback on the criteria; University of Waterloo students, staff and faculty are encouraged to complete the online survey, open until August 3.

For more information about the Building the Future of Care Together project and the site selection process, please visit the Building the Future of Care Together website.

Plant Operations is reporting that there will be a Ring Road shutdown today between parking Lot-L and the one-way drive lane beside Special Constable Services/ Commissary as a duct bank is being installed. Vehicle and bicycle traffic will be re-routed around the ring road, but there will still be access into Lots N and L, the GSC and COM. Pedestrian traffic will be re-routed through main path. Detour maps and signage will be posted in front of the BMH sidewalk and in front of the GSC sidewalk.

The road and sidewalks will reopen on July 20.

Plant Operations also reports that there will be fire alarm testing in the Minota Hagey and Mackenzie King Village residences on Friday, July 21 between 1:00 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. "The fire alarm audibles will sound for approximately 1 minute and building evacuation is not required," says the note from Plant Operations.

Food Truck Wednesdays continue in the Arts Quad this week with Pablas Street Food of India and the return of the Funnel Cloud Team from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Friends and colleagues of Shirley Lokker will be celebrating her retirement with an open house on Wednesday, July 26 from 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the Engineering Undergraduate Office in E2 1772. Light refreshments will be served.