Potential uses of an infodemiology approach for health-care services for rheumatology.

Objectives: This is a demand-based infodemiology study using the Google Trends and AdWords tools to illustrate infodemiology's potential use in rheumatology. The study investigates three questions in North American countries: (1) What terms associated with "rheumatology" and "arthritis" do people search for on Google? (2) What is the search volume for disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs)? and (3) What is the search volume for the term "arthritis" compared with for "hepatitis C" and "breast cancer"?

Methods: We conducted independent searches by country and search term for 2015-2017. Seventeen DMARDs were searched for 2015 through May 2018, with the turmeric remedy included for comparison.