JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Internet search data can reflect people’s concerns about health–related topics in near–real time and serve as a supplementary metric of disease characteristics. In this study, we present a detailed analysis of the associations between Google relative search volumes (RSVs) and published data on lung cancer, and further forecast future trends of lung cancer in the United States.

Objective:

The aim of the present study was to explore the association of internet search volumes for lung cancer with published cancer incidence and mortality rates in the United States.

Methods:

We created a smoothed time series of RSVs to eliminate the effects of irregular changes and obtain the long–term trends at both the national and state levels. We performed cross–sectional analyses of original and decomposed Google RSV data and disease metrics at the national and state levels.

Results:

The trends of lung cancer–related internet hits were consistent with the trends of reported lung cancer rates nationally. Ohio had the highest RSV. At the state level, the RSV was statistically significantly correlated with lung cancer incidence in 42 states, with correlations ranging from 0.578 to 0.943. RSV was also significantly correlated with mortality in 47 states. Both the lung cancer incidence and mortality rates were correlated with decomposed RSVs in 50 states, with Vermont being the only exception.

Conclusions:

Search behaviors indeed reflect public awareness of cancer. Google RSVs offer tremendous scientific possibilities to complement traditional lung cancer screening, data collection, and analysis of related interests. Hence, research on internet search behaviors could offer an innovative and timely approach to monitoring and estimating lung cancer incidence and mortality rates.