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Cell phone data that is routinely collected by telecommunications providers can reveal changes of behavior in people who are diagnosed with a flu-like illness, while also protecting their anonymity, a new study finds. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published the research, led by computer scientists at Emory University and based on data drawn from a 2009 outbreak of H1N1 flu in Iceland.
“To our knowledge, our project is the first major, rigorous study to individually link passively-collected cell phone metadata with actual public health data,” says Ymir Vigfusson, assistant professor in Emory University’s Department of Computer Science and a first author of the study. “We’ve shown that it’s possible to do so without comprising privacy and that our method could potentially provide a useful tool to help monitor and control infectious disease outbreaks.”
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Cell phone data that is routinely collected by telecommunications providers can reveal changes of behavior in people who are diagnosed with a flu-like illness, while also protecting their anonymity, a new study finds. The
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published the research, led by computer scientists at Emory University and based on data drawn from a 2009 outbreak of H1N1 flu in Iceland. To our knowledge, our project is the first major, rigorous study to individually link passively-collected cell phone metadata with actual public health data, says Ymir Vigfusson, assistant professor in Emory University s Department of Computer Science and a first author of the study. We ve shown that it s possible to do so without comprising privacy and that our method could potentially provide a useful tool to help monitor and control infectious disease outbreaks.