TY  - JOUR
AU  - Poirier, Canelle
AU  - Bouzillé, Guillaume
AU  - Bertaud, Valérie
AU  - Cuggia, Marc
AU  - Santillana, Mauricio
AU  - Lavenu, Audrey
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/1/31
TI  - Gastroenteritis Forecasting Assessing the Use of Web and Electronic Health Record Data With a Linear and a Nonlinear Approach: Comparison Study
JO  - JMIR Public Health Surveill
SP  - e34982
VL  - 9
KW  - infectious disease
KW  - acute gastroenteritis
KW  - modeling
KW  - modeling disease outbreaks
KW  - machine learning
KW  - public health
KW  - machine learning in public health
KW  - forecasting
KW  - digital data
AB  - Background: Disease surveillance systems capable of producing accurate real-time and short-term forecasts can help public health officials design timely public health interventions to mitigate the effects of disease outbreaks in affected populations. In France, existing clinic-based disease surveillance systems produce gastroenteritis activity information that lags real time by 1 to 3 weeks. This temporal data gap prevents public health officials from having a timely epidemiological characterization of this disease at any point in time and thus leads to the design of interventions that do not take into consideration the most recent changes in dynamics. Objective: The goal of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of using internet search query trends and electronic health records to predict acute gastroenteritis (AG) incidence rates in near real time, at the national and regional scales, and for long-term forecasts (up to 10 weeks). Methods: We present 2 different approaches (linear and nonlinear) that produce real-time estimates, short-term forecasts, and long-term forecasts of AG activity at 2 different spatial scales in France (national and regional). Both approaches leverage disparate data sources that include disease-related internet search activity, electronic health record data, and historical disease activity. Results: Our results suggest that all data sources contribute to improving gastroenteritis surveillance for long-term forecasts with the prominent predictive power of historical data owing to the strong seasonal dynamics of this disease. Conclusions: The methods we developed could help reduce the impact of the AG peak by making it possible to anticipate increased activity by up to 10 weeks. 
SN  - 2369-2960
UR  - https://publichealth.jmir.org/2023/1/e34982
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/34982
UR  - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36719726
DO  - 10.2196/34982
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/34982
ER  -