Digital Public Health Surveillance with Online Health Consultation Data: An Example of HIV Monitoring.

There is increasing interest in obtaining electronic information from sources other than official public health organizations for public health surveillance. The potential of novel digital data sources, such as internet news, search engine, social media, mobile apps and wearable devices in improving the speed, scope and temporal precision of disease surveillance have been demonstrated. However, the value of Online Health Consultation (OHC) data in public health surveillance is ignored. This study aims to assess the predictive value of OHC data in public health surveillance. This study constructs a public health surveillance system for HIV with OHC data based on the medical entities extraction and disease prediction two-module framework. This research outcome will contribute to closing the knowledge gap in the research area of digital public health surveillance and provide inspiration for relevant scholars to make better use of OHC data in their research.