Healthc Inform Res.  2018 Oct;24(4):253-262. 10.4258/hir.2018.24.4.253.

Digital Epidemiology: Use of Digital Data Collected for Non-epidemiological Purposes in Epidemiological Studies

• Park HA
• Jung H
• On J
• Park SK
• Kang H

• KMID: 2434540
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.4258/hir.2018.24.4.253

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
We reviewed digital epidemiological studies to characterize how researchers are using digital data by topic domain, study purpose, data source, and analytic method.
METHODS
We reviewed research articles published within the last decade that used digital data to answer epidemiological research questions. Data were abstracted from these articles using a data collection tool that we developed. Finally, we summarized the characteristics of the digital epidemiological studies.
RESULTS
We identified six main topic domains: infectious diseases (58.7%), non-communicable diseases (29.4%), mental health and substance use (8.3%), general population behavior (4.6%), environmental, dietary, and lifestyle (4.6%), and vital status (0.9%). We identified four categories for the study purpose: description (22.9%), exploration (34.9%), explanation (27.5%), and prediction and control (14.7%). We identified eight categories for the data sources: web search query (52.3%), social media posts (31.2%), web portal posts (11.9%), webpage access logs (7.3%), images (7.3%), mobile phone network data (1.8%), global positioning system data (1.8%), and others (2.8%). Of these, 50.5% used correlation analyses, 41.3% regression analyses, 25.6% machine learning, and 19.3% descriptive analyses.
CONCLUSIONS
Digital data collected for non-epidemiological purposes are being used to study health phenomena in a variety of topic domains. Digital epidemiology requires access to large datasets and advanced analytics. Ensuring open access is clearly at odds with the desire to have as little personal data as possible in these large datasets to protect privacy. Establishment of data cooperatives with restricted access may be a solution to this dilemma.

Keyword

Public Health Surveillance; Epidemiology; Epidemiological Monitoring; Social Media; Internet

MeSH Terms

Cell Phones
Communicable Diseases
Data Collection
Dataset
Epidemiologic Studies*
Epidemiological Monitoring
Epidemiology*
Geographic Information Systems
Humans
Information Storage and Retrieval
Internet
Life Style
Machine Learning
Mental Health
Methods
Privacy
Public Health Surveillance
Social Media

Figure

• 

  Figure 1 Flowchart of literature selection.

• 

  Figure 2 Distribution of articles included in review by year of publication.

• 

  Figure 3 Geographic locations.

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