ReviewEmerging themes in epidemiology2014
Public health for the people: participatory infectious disease surveillance in the digital age.
Review in Emerging themes in epidemiology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04663776 (Wide Scale Monitoring for Acute Respiratory Infection Using a Mobile-Based Study Platform), which is not on this map. Cited by 79 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Wide Scale Monitoring for Acute Respiratory Infection Using a Mobile-Based Study Platform
Who cites it
79 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- What are the characteristics of participatory surveillance systems for influenza-like-illness?Journal of global health · 2023Pooled it
- Digital disease detection: A systematic review of event-based internet biosurveillance systems.International journal of medical informatics · 2017Pooled it
- Nontraditional Data in Pandemic Preparedness and Response: Identifying and Addressing First- and Last-Mile Challenges.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Active Participatory Surveillance for Early Detection of Notifiable Pathogens: A Case Study of the U.S. Swine Industry.Viruses · 2026Article
- Enrollment in participatory surveillance programs and influenza vaccination uptake: A systematic review protocol.PloS one · 2026Article
- Assessment of Influenza Testing Distribution in the United States for the 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024 Influenza Seasons: Online Cross-Sectional Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2025Article
- Data Parameters From Participatory Surveillance Systems in Human, Animal, and Environmental Health From Around the Globe: Descriptive Analysis.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2025Article
- Building models, building capacity: A review of participatory machine learning for HIV prevention.PLOS global public health · 2025Review
- Participatory Disease Surveillance for the Early Detection of Cholera-Like Diarrheal Disease Outbreaks in Rural Villages in Malawi: Prospective Cohort Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- Vaccine effectiveness against emerging COVID-19 variants using digital health data.Communications medicine · 2024Article
- Development of a crowdsourcing- and gamification-based mobile application to collect epidemiological information and promote healthy lifestyles in Mexico.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Active Participatory Regional Surveillance for Notifiable Swine Pathogens.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Incorporating connectivity among Internet search data for enhanced influenza-like illness tracking.PloS one · 2024Article
- Syndromic surveillance performance in Canada throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, March 1, 2020 to March 4, 2023.Canada communicable disease report = Releve des maladies transmissibles au Canada · 2023Article
- Comparison of Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) incidence data from the novel LeCellPHIA participatory surveillance system with COVID-19 case count data, Lesotho, July 2020 - July 2021.BMC infectious diseases · 2023Article
- An effective internet-based system for surveillance and elimination of triatomine insects: AlertaChirimacha.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2023Article
- Engaging a national-scale cohort of smart thermometer users in participatory surveillance.NPJ digital medicine · 2023Article
- Enabling Multicentric Participatory Disease Surveillance for Global Health Enhancement: Viewpoint on Global Flu View.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2023Article
- Smart Thermometer-Based Participatory Surveillance to Discern the Role of Children in Household Viral Transmission During the COVID-19 Pandemic.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Participatory Surveillance for COVID-19 Trend Detection in Brazil: Cross-sectional Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2023Article
19 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The 21(st) century has seen the rise of Internet-based participatory surveillance systems for infectious diseases. These systems capture voluntarily submitted symptom data from the general public and can aggregate and communicate that data in near real-time. We reviewed participatory surveillance systems currently running in 13 different countries. These systems have a growing evidence base showing a high degree of accuracy and increased sensitivity and timeliness relative to traditional healthcare-based systems. They have also proven useful for assessing risk factors, vaccine effectiveness, and patterns of healthcare utilization while being less expensive, more flexible, and more scalable than traditional systems. Nonetheless, they present important challenges including biases associated with the population that chooses to participate, difficulty in adjusting for confounders, and limited specificity because of reliance only on syndromic definitions of disease limits. Overall, participatory disease surveillance data provides unique disease information that is not available through traditional surveillance sources.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.