Running head: DATA ANALYSIS IN HEALTH 1

Data analysis in Health

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Data Analysis in Health

Critique on Google Trends can improve Surveillance of Type 2 diabetes

(https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-05091-9)

Introduction

This article explores deeply on how the technology has advanced, reaching to heights

of providing secure, comprehensive and data that can be accessed personally on searching

engines, like Google, and providing numerous benefits to people who want to know more of

Type 2 diabetes. The article outline the causes and reasons as to why people are increasingly

searching from online servers to access personal health, establishing presence of personal

preferences of the patients and the beliefs to inability to have an appointment with medical

professionals (Tkacheno, Chotviit, Gupta, et al., 2017). In the article, it makes the utilization

of presently embraced risk factors as background data against which the connection between

self diagnosed and medically diagnosis are developed; by adding different behavioural

preferences, believing that false negative and positive components of self-diagnosis could

fine-turn the output of broadly defined risk factors for contemporary model. The research

problem being addressed is whether use of Google Trends on Type 2 diabetes surveillance

can also be considered more advantageous to use in gathering of health data and demonstrate

whether Google Trends can detect early diabetes symptoms by monitoring keyword

combinations associated with hypertension treatment searches and poor living conditions.

It is clear from the abstract of the article that use of Google Trends has impacted its

importance and dependency in medical field as the patients or individuals who lack schedules

to meet with local medical professions; they can comfortably have a source of data

concerning their health without visiting them. Although, these modes of acquiring

information is not accounted for by the disease surveillance model. All in all, the source of
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information could be potentially useful as evidence perception of body changes and self

diagnosis.

The article expounds on how use of Google Trends acts as helping hand in the case of

unavailability of getting access to medical professionals. The lack of professionals definitely

makes patients to turn to Google to diagnose their ailments, rather than spending a lot of time

trying to find and identify medical professionals, time that would be utilised in other fields.

Key Scientific Contributions

The authors of the article “Google and Trends can improve Surveillance of Type 2

diabetes” dictates that it has already been recognized that the use of new or alternate data

sources to track and help decision-making in public health, also requires an understanding of

the dynamic relations between time-varying public health issues and the time-varying signal

of new data flows.

The article continues to demonstrate that these kinds of connections can be highly

dependent and situational on the influence of external forces or user behaviour. Therefore, in

the contest of the data, the author used two model scenarios, one with a self-diagnosis and the

other without, in regard to co-occurrence of their related repressors with the interest of the

public subject of the diabetes on the internet. The study aimed at hypothesis that self-

diagnosis is important to identifying additional risks factor for behaviour and lifestyle. To get

other integrative social bulk, the authors used lifestyle segmentation and a single

geodemographic information set, the Experian Mosaic Public Sector database (Tkacheno,

Chotviit, Gupta, et al., 2017).

The authors used a combined inventory of risk factors from two major United

Kingdom models to extract the variables for modelling scenarios: Cambridge Diabetes Risk

Score and QD Score. Models of risk assessment used by healthcare professionals were

derived from samples of non-diabetic individuals who are tracked over time until some have
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developed diabetes and a subsequent analysis based on measurements of risk factor as to

which is important for those who developed the disease (Tkacheno, Chotviit, Gupta, et al.,

2017).

Strengths and Weaknesses

The article has clearly shows detailed topic and continues to elaborate on the

importance of using Google trends to improve surveillance of Type 2 diabetes. According to

Tkacheno, Chotviit, Gupta, et al., 2017) the approach of using webs or other searching

engineers could be of significant benefits as it would allow patients to have more education

or knowledge concerning diabetes, chronic disease and other different varieties of diseases.

However, the authors did not provide key information about the orientation program they

used in their study. This lack of details would make it difficult to replicate their program in

order to expand further the research on this kind of program. Also, the author did not provide

information or updates on family history of diabetes. It would make it hard to relate how the

disease may be associated as a family.

This article focused on an important topic within technology and health, use of

Google trends to improve surveillance of Type 2 diabetes that would embrace to finding

solutions to advance retention. The main barriers that may affect our old parent or even some

uneducated youth, this is because they may be un-familiarised with websites when accessing

the right information. So, an online or an orientation design should be used to help or offer

guidance to reduce the rates of unfamiliarity to those who want to learn more about the

diabetes, chronic disease or even other forms of diseases. Nataliya Tkachenko among other

authors of this article shared a remarkable reward of offering such better information to many

readers, that is meant to provide knowledge to patients in accessing quick and cheap form of

consultation. This report, however, did not adequately identify this system of orientation so

that future researchers could reproduce it in other samples. It is necessary to provide evidence
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of the impact of online orientation programs with a clear description of the program among a

larger, more diverse sample.

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References

Tkachenko, N., Chotvijit, S., Gupta, N. et al. (2017). Google Trends can improve

surveillance of Type 2 diabetes. Sci Rep 7, 4993 doi:10.1038/s41598-017-05091-9