Max is NOW!

Google has, arguably, created some of the best pieces of cloud technology in the past five to ten years. And I’m pretty sure their reign of free, powerful tech is far from over. Especially considering the recent release of Google.org’s Flu Trends.

While I’m no self-acknowledging nerd, I have been called on many occasions by that term. Days like today make me feel the effects of my nerdiness. Why? Well, because I spent about three hours last evening tooling with the different charts and data output from this sweet little program.

How does it work?
It’s quite amazing actually. Instead of going by the classic techniques of tracking disease, Google decided to break away and attempt to get faster results on regional trends with influenza. They have done this by aggregating search terms for certain regions and classifying those terms in accordance to a relationship with influenza.

What does this do exactly?
Well, potentially, it tracks the amounts of searches for certain terms found to be related to instances of influenza appearing. Stuff like searches on symptoms, treatments, local specialists, vaccinations, and the like.

Why is that important?
While most disease tracking is done through reporting at doctors offices, this can prove to fall behind the actual moving trend of an illness. With this data aggregation and interpretation, it would seem that one could watch the spread or trend of an illness in almost real-time. Perhaps, this could lead to better concentrating vaccination needs and medical emergency services for more serious diseases. It will also provide an incredible amount of information for future research of disease control and trends.

If anything, this software Google has concocted is quite beautiful and useful. When will they stop making things that make me feel like such a nerd? input….input….inpuuuuut.