Linking Annual Prescription Volume of Antidepressants to Corresponding Web Search Query Data

Abstract

Persons using the Internet to retrieve medical information generate large amounts of health-related data, which are increasingly used in modern health sciences. We analyzed the relation between annual prescription volumes (APVs) of several antidepressants with marketing approval in Germany and corresponding web search query data generated in Google to test whether web search query volume may be a proxy for medical prescription practice. We obtained APVs of several antidepressants related to corresponding prescriptions at the expense of the statutory health insurance in Germany from 2004 to 2013. Web search query data generated in Germany and related to defined search terms (active substance or brand name) were obtained with Google Trends. We calculated correlations (Person's r) between the APVs of each substance and the respective annual "search share" values; coefficients of determination (R) were computed to determine the amount of variability shared by the 2 variables. Significant and strong correlations between substance-specific APVs and corresponding annual query volumes were found for each substance during the observational interval: agomelatine (r = 0.968, R = 0.932, P = 0.01), bupropion (r = 0.962, R = 0.925, P = 0.01), citalopram (r = 0.970, R = 0.941, P = 0.01), escitalopram (r = 0.824, R = 0.682, P = 0.01), fluoxetine (r = 0.885, R = 0.783, P = 0.01), paroxetine (r = 0.801, R = 0.641, P = 0.01), and sertraline (r = 0.880, R = 0.689, P = 0.01). Although the used data did not allow to perform an analysis with a higher temporal resolution (quarters, months), our results suggest that web search query volume may be a proxy for corresponding prescription behavior. However, further studies analyzing other pharmacologic agents and prescription data that facilitate an increased temporal resolution are needed to confirm this hypothesis.

Direct oral anticoagulants: analysis of worldwide use and popularity using Google Trends

“…The final output, the Google Trends score, is not meant to mirror, at least directly, the epidemiology of a given drug, but reflects the interest of the general public in that same pharmacological agent, with the final score potentially influenced also by media clamor at the time. Nevertheless, and quite understandably, the larger the use of a new therapy, the bigger the general interest of patients and physicians for that drug, as reliably proven by some earlier investigations (16,17,19).…”

“…Briefly, a value of 100 reflects the peak popularity for the term, a value of 50 means that the term had half the peak popularity, whereas a value of 0 means the term was less than 1% as popular as the peak. The use of Google Trends is becoming increasingly frequent in biomedical research, and this tool has already been profitably used in many scientific publications, especially for investigating epidemiological trends of specific pathological conditions (15), and also as a reliable means for reflecting real use of some types of drugs such as antibiotics (16) and antidepressants (17). Due to increasing use of DOACs in routine practice, we hence planned this original study to investigate the worldwide popularity of these agents in terms of Google Web searches of DOACs.…”

How Do People Experiencing Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders or Other Psychotic Disorders Use the Internet to Get Information on Their Mental Health? Literature Review and Recommendations

“…Internet, social media, and online technologies have become powerful tools in the mental health sector, leading transformations that go from infodemiology and infoveillance—the monitoring of suicidal tendancies [3-6] or medical antidepressants prescription behaviors [7], for example, with a Google Trends-based approach—to crowdsourcing for conducting randomized trials for the purpose of scientific research [8], not to mention the delivery of evidence-based therapies targeting various mental illnesses [9,10]. Some thought papers have studied the evolution of telepsychiatry, also called “e-mental health care,” where this expression defines a “practice supported by electronic processes and communication, (including) mental health applications and links on mobile phones” and services of “information (delivering), peer support services, computer- and Internet-based programs, virtual applications, and games, as well as real time interaction with trained clinicians” [11].…”

Forecasting AIDS prevalence in the United States using online search traffic data

“…Recently, more topics on relating Google data with official health data have been visited, as in the case of suicide rates, where it has been show that Google queries can be used to monitor the risk of suicide [18,19]. On a different direction, there has been shown that correlations exist between Google Trends data and prescription drugs issuing [20,21] and revenues [22]. Apart from prescription drugs, focus has been given to illegal drugs as well, with notable examples including the tracking of dabbing in the US [23], Krokodil in Russia [24], and Methamphetamines in Central Europe [25].…”