Early detection of what?
The interest in using pre-diagnostic data for the early detection of disease outbreaks, has evolved in interesting ways in the last 10 years. In the early 2000s, I was involved in an effort to explore the potential of non-traditional data sources, such as over-the-counter pharmacy sales and web searches on medical websites, which might give earlier signs of a disease outbreak than confirmed diagnostic data (lab tests, doctor diagnoses, etc.). The pre-diagnostic data sources that we looked at were not only expected to have an earlier footprint of the outbreak compared to traditional diagnostic data, but they were also collected … Continue reading Early detection of what?