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Microsoft Analyzes Web Searches, Finds Clues For Early Cancer Detection (computerworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Computerworld: Analyzing online activities can provide clues as to a person's chances of having cancer, Microsoft researchers showed in a paper published this week. Specifically, the researchers demonstrated that by analyzing web query logs they were able to identify internet users who had pancreatic cancer even before they'd been diagnosed. The study suggest that "low-cost, high-coverage surveillance systems" can be created to passively observe search behavior and to provide early warning for pancreatic cancer, and with extension of the methodology, for other challenging cancers," the researchers concluded. "Surveillance systems could also provide for automated capture and summarization of data and landmarks over time so as to provide patients with talking points in their discussion with medical professionals." The researchers used proprietary logs of 9.2 million web queries on Microsoft's own Bing search engine but focused exclusively on English-speaking people in the U.S. from October 2013 to May 2015. First, the team identified searchers in logs of online search activity who made "special queries" that are suggestive of a recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Those queries included phrases such as "Why did I get cancer in pancreas," and "I was told I have pancreatic cancer, what to expect." The team then went back "many months" before the initial queries were made to examine patterns of symptoms as they were expressed by web searches about pancreatic cancer symptoms. "We showed specifically that we can identify 5% to 15% of cases, while preserving extremely low false-positive rates," the researchers said in their paper. The false positives ranged from one in 10,000 to one in 100,000.
Researchers have very low false-positive rate when analyzing past data.
They just scan the user agent of the browser connecting, and if it contains "Linux" it means there is a cancer infection in the eyes of Microsoft.
THAT'S what they'd use it for.
To protect us from Cancer.
They looked for people searching for "how to cope with stage 4 cancer" and sure enough, those people had it in most cases. How DO they do it?
And your search engine mining your search history to figure out which diseases you might have is not creepy at all! No sir.
And surely there is nothing else that could be done with this technique.
I'd suggest this one instead.
STOP watching/tracking what I'm doing with my computer -- it's creepy as fuck!
(Switched to Mac years ago, not going back to windows and it's "telemetry". Not so sure of Apple either, but at least they claim to not track users and collect data on them -- their business model (currently) is selling shiny toys -- not selling data. And they have been pushing back on surveillance in the courts and their encryption is good. Filevault should be on by default.)
Ian Ameline
cancer
or
dissident ideology
which one do you think is likely to be acted on to promote stability for the economy from which microsoft profits?
Seriously us people who aren't herd animals need to get it together. There is clearly a massive conspiracy against us all. Are you going to wait around to see what the top of the hierarchy does with all of this information they have on us once the economy becomes majorly automated?
Unless you have symptoms that are just in common with pancreatic cancer symptoms, in which case they are just symptoms of something else. The study has a biased sample, since they where studying the history of "known cancer" patients (or someone who lies to search engines... for example, I just now searched "I think I have pancreatic cancer"... Shit! - oh, wait, I just searched for "medical student syndrome", too! Whew! That's what I have.)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Clippy: It looks like you may have cancer! Would you like me to schedule an appointment with an oncologist?
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
It's anonymous if they can't identify that "same user", they don't know it's Bob, and they can't figure it out. They have to identify that user to be able to perform the statistical analysis.
Learn to love Alaska
Just what I need, a pop up window that says "CONGRATULATIONS YOU'RE THE 1 MILLIONTH VISITOR WITH PANCREATIC CANCER!"
This is where a good doctor comes in. If you are vomiting and have abdominal pains and DO NOT go to the Doctor then you should have no expectations of survival once this fast-moving Cancer is revealed. A good Doc will run tests when presented with these symptoms and hopefully catch it early. A good Doc with EXP will know what's up when presented with your symptoms.
Do yourself a favor, stop searching on WebMD, Google and Bing. Visit your Doctor instead.
And how many of their research subjects had been diagnosed with hypochondria? Searching for symptoms and eventual disease isn't unlikely pattern, whereas someone actually suffering from it would be more likely to only ask a doctor. Didn't bother to read the article, of course, but hopefully they did also check whether they did search indicating diagnosis also before, and possibly for other diseases.
I also have to join those questioning the "false positive" rate there. People are perhaps even more liable to search for other people's conditions than their own, and while showing them a banner like "Your searches indicate X" would work just as well, in the context of the study that should count as a false positive. One question on this is exactly how they're counting or reporting false positives. Approximately 5 in 100.000 will get pancreating cancer *in their lifetime*, which comes to neighborhood 1 to 1.000.000 million per year. If their algorithm actually tagges 1 in 10.000 users as having pancreatic cancer then it is next to useless. If 1 in 10.000 tagged didn't turn out to have pancreatic cancer, then it's unbelievable.
And indeed, assuming they were searching for identifiable symptoms, wouldn't they have discovered their cancer earlier? Is this a case of too slow medical system, or just a case of people who already know they have pancreatic cancer sometimes making searches looking like recent diagnosis... the example of "Why did I get pancreatic cancer?" in the summary for example is pretty telling, as that would seem quite likely search for a late-stage patient.
I wonder if my search history would have shown I was likely to have it. My symptoms were so vague that I waited about 6 weeks before going to the doctor - general discomfort in the abdominal area (2 different spots that were separated), a little more gas and diarrhea than normal, possibly slight weight loss, maybe a bit more tired than normal. The doctor ordered tests that showed gall stones and positive for H. Pylori (main cause of ulcers). She put me on antibiotics for the H. Pylori but my impression was she didn't think that was it. It wasn't till I started throwing up, went to the E.R., turned yellow while IN E.R., that they ordered the CAT scan that revealed the tumor. It also showed a lesion in my liver and the E.R. doctors told me it had already spread (the liver lesion turned out to be benign).
I may be one of the 'lucky' ones. Mine was operable and I got in a trial for an immuno-therapy drug. I'm now almost 3 months post-op (the Wipple procedure is NOT for wimps), there was no cancer in the margins or in the lymph nodes near it, and my tumor marker level is now at 20. I just started my 2nd round of chemo and may actually survive the cancer.
Some symptoms that doctors may dismiss as other illnesses, this search capability may catch.
What I took away from this is that people who use Bing get cancer.
One in ten thousand is a lot of erroneous diagnoses when you're doing web search scraping.