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

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169801
• Publication Date: 2017-01-11T13:47:28Z
• Authors: Daniela Perrotta; Antonino Bella; Caterina Rizzo; Daniela Paolotti
• Keywords: Adult; Male; Internet; Science; Q; R; Middle Aged; Telemedicine; 3. Good health; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Italy; Influenza, Human; Medicine; Humans; Female; Sentinel Surveillance; Research Article

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.