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New iPhone App Locates Swine Flu, Infectious Diseases

App lets individuals track, report local outbreak information

By James Limbach
ConsumerAffairs.com

September 1, 2009

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Want to locate the latest outbreak of swine flu, also known as H1N1? Check your iPhone.

A new application for the smart phone, created by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, enables users to track and report outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as swine flu, on the ground in real time.

The application, "Outbreaks Near Me," builds upon HealthMap, an online resource that collects, filters, maps and disseminates information about emerging infectious diseases, and provides a new, contextualized view of a user's specific location -- pinpointing outbreaks that have been reported in the vicinity of the user and offering the opportunity to search for additional outbreak information by location or disease.

Outbreaks Near Me is also able to set alerts that will notify users on their devices or by e-mail when new outbreaks are reported in their proximity, or if a user enters a new area of activity.

"We hope individuals will find the new app to be a useful source of outbreak information -- locally, nationally, and globally," says HealthMap co-founder John Brownstein, PhD, assistant professor in the Children's Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP). "As people are equipped with more knowledge and awareness of infectious disease, the hope is that they will become more involved and proactive about public health."

The new application also features an option for users to submit an outbreak report. This will let individuals in cities and countries around the world interact with the HealthMap team and participate in the public health surveillance process. Users may take photos of situations and scenarios of, and/or leading to, disease with their iPhones and submit them to the HealthMap system for review and eventual posting as an alert on the worldwide map.

"This is grassroots, participatory epidemiology," says HealthMap co-founder Clark Freifeld, a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab and research software developer at CHIP. "In releasing this app we aim to empower citizens in the cause of public health, not only by providing ready access to real-time information, but also by encouraging them to contribute their own knowledge, expertise, and observations. In enabling participation in surveillance, we also expect to increase global coverage and identify outbreaks earlier."

HealthMap was founded in 2006 and mines the Internet - searching disparate data sources such as news reports, curated personal accounts, official alerts, blogs and chat rooms - to track and map infectious disease outbreaks. While the data have been shown to provide early information on new outbreaks, users are encouraged to interpret the data appropriately as it is drawn from both official and unofficial sources.

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