University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland.
Influenza Other Respir Viruses. 2019 Jul;13(4):364-371. doi: 10.1111/irv.12640. Epub 2019 Mar 6.
Healthcare professionals (HCPs) search medical information during their clinical work using Internet sources. In Finland, Physician's Databases (PD) serve as an Internet medical portal aimed at HCPs. Influenza epidemics appear seasonal outbreaks causing public health concern. Oseltamivir can be used to treat influenza. Little is known about HCPs' queries on oseltamivir and influenza from dedicated online medical portals and whether queries could be used as an additional source of information for disease surveillance when detecting influenza epidemics.
We compared HCPs' queries on oseltamivir and influenza from PD to influenza diagnoses from the primary healthcare register in Finland 2011-2016. The Moving Epidemic Method (MEM) calculated the starts of influenza epidemics. Laboratory reports of influenza A and influenza B were assessed. Paired differences compared queries, diagnoses, and laboratory reports by using starting weeks. Kendall's correlation test assessed the season-to-season similarity.
We found that PD and the primary healthcare register showed visually similar patterns annually. Paired differences in the mean showed that influenza epidemics based on queries on oseltamivir started earlier than epidemics based on diagnoses by -0.80 weeks (95% CI: -1.0, 0.0) with high correlation (τ = 0.943). Queries on influenza preceded queries on oseltamivir by -0.80 weeks (95% CI: -1.2, 0.0) and diagnoses by -1.60 weeks (95% CI: -1.8, -1.0).
HCPs' queries on oseltamivir and influenza from Internet medical databases correlated with register diagnoses of influenza. Therefore, they should be considered as a supplementary source of information for disease surveillance when detecting influenza epidemics.
医疗保健专业人员（HCP）在临床工作中使用互联网资源搜索医学信息。在芬兰，医师数据库（PD）作为一个面向 HCP 的互联网医疗门户。流感呈季节性爆发，引起公众健康关注。奥司他韦可用于治疗流感。关于 HCP 从专用在线医疗门户查询奥司他韦和流感以及查询是否可用于流感爆发检测时作为疾病监测的额外信息来源知之甚少。
我们比较了 2011-2016 年期间 PD 中 HCP 对奥司他韦和流感的查询与芬兰初级保健登记处的流感诊断。移动流行方法（MEM）计算了流感流行的开始。评估了流感 A 和流感 B 的实验室报告。使用起始周比较了查询、诊断和实验室报告的配对差异。Kendall 相关性检验评估了季节间的相似性。
我们发现 PD 和初级保健登记处每年显示出视觉上相似的模式。平均配对差异表明，基于奥司他韦查询的流感流行比基于诊断的流感流行早开始 -0.80 周（95%CI：-1.0，0.0），相关性很高（τ=0.943）。流感查询比奥司他韦查询早开始 -0.80 周（95%CI：-1.2，0.0），比诊断早开始 -1.60 周（95%CI：-1.8，-1.0）。
来自互联网医疗数据库的 HCP 对奥司他韦和流感的查询与流感登记诊断相关。因此，在流感爆发检测时，应将其视为疾病监测的补充信息来源。
