Microsoft Research, Alan Turing 3, Hertzliya, 4672415, Israel.
Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion, Haifa, 3200000, Israel.
Sci Rep. 2021 Dec 27;11(1):24449. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-03977-3.
Syndromic surveillance systems monitor disease indicators to detect emergence of diseases and track their progression. Here, we report on a rapidly deployed active syndromic surveillance system for tracking COVID-19 in Israel. The system was a novel combination of active and passive components: Ads were shown to people searching for COVID-19 symptoms on the Google search engine. Those who clicked on the ads were referred to a chat bot which helped them decide whether they needed urgent medical care. Through its conversion optimization mechanism, the ad system was guided to focus on those people who required such care. Over 6 months, the ads were shown approximately 214,000 times and clicked on 12,000 times, and 722 people were informed they needed urgent care. Click rates on ads and the fraction of people deemed to require urgent care were correlated with the hospitalization rate ([Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], respectively) with a lead time of 9 days. Males and younger people were more likely to use the system, and younger people were more likely to be determined to require urgent care (slope: [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]). Thus, the system can assist in predicting case numbers and hospital load at a significant lead time and, simultaneously, help people determine if they need medical care.
症状监测系统通过监测疾病指标来发现疾病的出现并跟踪其进展。在这里，我们报告了一个在以色列快速部署的用于跟踪 COVID-19 的主动症状监测系统。该系统是主动和被动组件的新颖组合：广告会展示给在谷歌搜索引擎上搜索 COVID-19 症状的人。点击广告的人会被引导至聊天机器人，该机器人可以帮助他们决定是否需要紧急医疗护理。通过其转换优化机制，广告系统被引导关注那些需要此类护理的人。在 6 个多月的时间里，大约展示了 214000 次广告，点击了 12000 次，有 722 人被告知需要紧急护理。广告的点击率和被认为需要紧急护理的人数与住院率呈正相关（分别为 [Formula: see text] 和 [Formula: see text]），提前 9 天。男性和年轻人更有可能使用该系统，年轻人更有可能被认为需要紧急护理（斜率：[Formula: see text]，[Formula: see text]）。因此，该系统可以在显著的提前期内帮助预测病例数量和医院负荷，同时帮助人们确定是否需要医疗护理。
