According to the CDC, flu season typically occurs during fall and winter. During the flu season, influenza cases can often increase tenfold or more. The only thing that spreads faster than the actual virus is the information about the flu. But how do you capture that information, and what do you do with it?
In 2008, a team of data analysts at Google launched Google Flu Trends. Google used rich data from its anonymous search queries to provide estimates of influenza activity – when and where the flu would be next. Google hypothesized that users with the flu are more likely to search for flu-related terms online before visiting their doctor. The data analysts at Google analyzed millions of search queries and published a heat map on Google Flu Trends that showed the location of flu-related search terms and how often they appeared.
Google Flu Trends identified flu activity early and helped reduce the impact of seasonal and pandemic influenza. In Google’s first year of tracking flu activity, Google Flu Trends predictions were 97% accurate compared to CDC data.
Google Flu Trends predicted regional outbreaks of the flu up to 10 days sooner than the CDC. Subsequent reports showed predictions were inaccurate in later years because of the natural increase in search volume due to the prominence of flu in the news. However, the search engine giant opened the door for big data analysts to study patterns of voluminous data to provide meaning to healthcare professionals in a timely manner.
Fast forward to 2020. Our technology has evolved tremendously over time, especially in comparison to 2008. Computers are increasingly faster and operate at a higher power than ever before. In addition to power, the cost of data storage has dropped significantly. Storing 1 GB of data cost $500,000 in 1980 and today it costs less than $0.03.
Are you a business that generates a lot of data? How do you store that data? Where do you store it? How much time do you spend each day gathering data and preparing excel reports?
What if there is an alternative way that could enable you to speed up your report delivery and save employees hundreds or even thousands of hours per month on report preparation so that your team can focus on other important tasks? What if you could use your data like Google to perform predictive analytics?
As your business partner, Blackman & Sloop cares about your evolving needs, especially in the dynamic environment of technology and analytics. Our firm has invested in industry-leading tools to provide our clients with the information they need to succeed. Our goal is to help our customers maximize the impact of their data with proper data visualization tools and techniques.
Leadership often asks the 4Ws to make sure the correct data is converted to the right information and sent to the appropriate people in their organization:
- Where was the data pulled from?
- When was the data produced?
- What kind of information is the data telling?
- Who needs this information to make business decisions?
When you partner with Blackman & Sloop’s Data Analytics team, we’ll help answer those questions. You’ll have the data necessary to keep leadership invested while knowing the data is accurate and appropriately analyzed.
By embracing a modern automated analytics process, our team supports our customers’ use of data to answer business questions in a visually compelling way. We can help your business start to think more like Google in order to effectively prepare for the future.
If you are interested in learning more information, please contact us to schedule a 30-minute complimentary consultation.