Internet-based surveillance systems provide a novel approach to monitoring infectious diseases.
Surveillance systems built on internet data are economically, logistically and epidemiologically appealing and have
shown significant promise. The potential for these systems has increased with increased internet availability and
shifts in health-related information seeking behaviour. This approach to monitoring infectious diseases has, however,
only been applied to single or small groups of select diseases. This study aims to systematically investigate the
potential for developing surveillance and early warning systems using internet search data, for a wide range of
infectious diseases