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Comparative Study
. 2012;7(8):e43611.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0043611. Epub 2012 Aug 30.

Comparison: Flu prescription sales data from a retail pharmacy in the US with Google Flu trends and US ILINet (CDC) data as flu activity indicator

Avinash Patwardhan  1 , Robert Bilkovski
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Comparison: Flu prescription sales data from a retail pharmacy in the US with Google Flu trends and US ILINet (CDC) data as flu activity indicator

Avinash Patwardhan et al. PLoS One. 2012.

Abstract

The potential threat of bioterrorism along with the emergence of new or existing drug resistant strains of influenza virus, added to expanded global travel, have increased vulnerability to epidemics or pandemics and their aftermath. The same factors have also precipitated urgency for having better, faster, sensitive, and reliable syndromic surveillance systems. Prescription sales data can provide surrogate information about the development of infectious diseases and therefore serve as a useful tool in syndromic surveillance. This study compared prescription sales data from a large drug retailing pharmacy chain in the United States with Google Flu trends surveillance system data as a flu activity indicator. It was found that the two were highly correlated. The correlation coefficient (Pearson 'r') for five years' aggregate data (2007-2011) was 0.92 (95% CI, 0.90-0.94). The correlation coefficients for each of the five years between 2007 and 2011 were 0.85, 0.92, 0.91, 0.88, and 0.87 respectively. Additionally, prescription sales data from the same large drug retailing pharmacy chain in the United States were also compared with US Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network (ILINet) data for 2007 by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The correlation coefficient (Pearson 'r') was 0.97 (95% CI, 0.95-0.98).

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: Both the authors are full time employees of Walgreen Co. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Google ILI versus retail drug chain influenza scripts: Trends: 2007 through 2011.
The comparative graphic representation of the Google ILI data as cases per 100,000 physicians visits for five years (2007–2011) and aggregate counts of scripts for four drugs commonly prescribed for influenza namely: Amantadine, Oseltamivir, Rimantadine, and Zanamivir from a large drug retailing pharmacy chain in the United States expressed as scripts per 100,000 total scripts for five years (2007–2011) after log transformation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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This research was funded by Walgreen Co. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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