Participatory Online Surveillance as a Supplementary Tool to Sentinel Doctors for Influenza-Like Illness Surveillance in Italy

PLoS One. 2017 Jan 11;12(1):e0169801. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169801. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

The monitoring of seasonal influenza yearly epidemics remains one of the main activity of national syndromic surveillance systems. The development of internet-based surveillance tools has brought an innovative approach to seasonal influenza surveillance by directly involving self-selected volunteers among the general population reporting their health status on a weekly basis throughout the flu season. In this paper, we explore how Influweb, an internet-based monitoring system for influenza surveillance, deployed in Italy since 2008 has performed during three years from 2012 to 2015 in comparison with data collected during the same period by the Italian sentinel doctors surveillance system.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Influenza, Human / epidemiology*
  • Internet*
  • Italy
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Sentinel Surveillance*
  • Telemedicine / methods*

Grants and funding

Daniela Paolotti and Daniela Perrotta acknowledge support from H2020 FETPROACT-GSS CIMPLEX grant no. 641191, URL: https://www.cimplex-project.eu/. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.