Father of infodemiology cries foul over Times coverage

The father of infodemiology and infoveillance (think, Google Flu Trends, which records your illness-related searches), writes to Parallelnormal.

Google ripped-off his idea, he says, and the Times neglected to contact him for its story about Flu Trends.

An excerpt, and link to the post, where you’ll find the comment from University of Toronto Professor Gunther Eysenbach, MD:

The NYT even goes so far to (wrongly) report that “Google Flu Trends appears to be the first public project that uses the powerful database of a search engine to track the emergence of a disease.”. Wrong – apparently this reporter didn’t do his homework or checked the published literature.

via Google the flu? The feds will see you « parallelnormal

Eysenbach’s definition of infodemiology, from 2002: “Describing and analyzing information and communication patterns and its relationship to population health status.”

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