In the latest use of the Internet and social media to counter the flu and infectious diseases, researchers from MIT and Harvard said Tuesday that iPhone users have a new means of monitoring the spread of swine flu and other disease outbreaks.
The new iPhone application, "Outbreaks Near Me," attempts to track the spread of flu outbreaks by monitoring social media and news reports online, using an existing resource called HealthMap, started in 2006. The app is a joint venture between MIT's Media Lab and Children's Hospital Boston.
"The idea is to try to put public health information in the hands of a greater number of people," said John Brownstein, who co-founded HealthMap and is an assistant professor in the hospital's informatics program. "This is a whole new realm of potential users of applications."
He said about 5,000 people downloaded the app on its first day.
A viewing of the app itself reveals it may not have entirely escaped some of the criticisms of past flu-tracking systems. It had an alert for the Washington, D.C., area, this morning, for instance, although a closer look revealed that the alert was triggered by an article about a hypothetical outbreak in schools in a local newspaper.
Source
.jpg)
0 Comments