Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31751346›Full record

ArticlePLoS computational biology2019

Forecasting dengue and influenza incidences using a sparse representation of Google trends, electronic health records, and time series data.

Prashant Rangarajan, Sandeep K Mody, Madhav Marathe

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PLoS computational biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
17citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
3.5field-weighted citation impact, top 7% of its field
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 42 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Review
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Ensemble approaches for short-term dengue fever forecasts: A global evaluation study.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Trends of Online Search of COVID-19 Related Terms in Cyprus.Epidemiologia (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021
    Article
  16. Article
  17. A call for an ethical framework when using social media data for artificial intelligence applications in public health research.Canada communicable disease report = Releve des maladies transmissibles au Canada · 2020
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.

Prashant RangarajanDepartments of Computer Science and Mathematics, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India.ORCID 0000-0003-1653-0658
Sandeep K ModyDepartment of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.ORCID 0000-0002-3561-469X
Madhav MaratheDepartment of Computer Science, Network, Simulation Science and Advanced Computing Division, Biocomplexity Institute, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America.
Biocom · USBirla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani · INIndian Institute of Science Bangalore · IN

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Dengue and influenza-like illness (ILI) are two of the leading causes of viral infection in the world and it is estimated that more than half the world's population is at risk for developing these infections. It is therefore important to develop accurate methods for forecasting dengue and ILI incidences. Since data from multiple sources (such as dengue and ILI case counts, electronic health records and frequency of multiple internet search terms from Google Trends) can improve forecasts, standard time series analysis methods are inadequate to estimate all the parameter values from the limited amount of data available if we use multiple sources. In this paper, we use a computationally efficient implementation of the known variable selection method that we call the Autoregressive Likelihood Ratio (ARLR) method. This method combines sparse representation of time series data, electronic health records data (for ILI) and Google Trends data to forecast dengue and ILI incidences. This sparse representation method uses an algorithm that maximizes an appropriate likelihood ratio at every step. Using numerical experiments, we demonstrate that our method recovers the underlying sparse model much more accurately than the lasso method. We apply our method to dengue case count data from five countries/states: Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand and to ILI case count data from the United States. Numerical experiments show that our method outperforms existing time series forecasting methods in forecasting the dengue and ILI case counts. In particular, our method gives a 18 percent forecast error reduction over a leading method that also uses data from multiple sources. It also performs better than other methods in predicting the peak value of the case count and the peak time.

Indexed as

BrazilDengueElectronic Health RecordsForecastingHumansIncidenceInfluenza, HumanInternetMexicoModels, StatisticalPopulation SurveillanceSingaporeTaiwanThailandTime FactorsUnited States

Identifiers

PMID31751346
PMCPMC6894887
OpenAlexW2990499930

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.