Word: apps
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...app is based on the same network of media and on-the-ground reporting that global health officials use to detect and track emerging diseases like H1N1 and 2003's SARS. Indeed, the first details of the strange respiratory disease, which surfaced in southern China six years ago, weren't published in a medical journal, nor were they issued by the World Health Organization (WHO). Rather, the earliest hints came in the media, in stories published in Chinese newspapers about people in Guangzhou and Shenzhen being struck down by a mysterious illness. Because Chinese officials forbade official reporting...
...iPhone app makes HealthMap information even more accessible to the average person, by marrying the map's network of global data with the smartphone's GPS function, which tracks an individual user's location. So the program enables you to find out instantly whether there are any new outbreaks close to home. "The system can deliver reports that are relevant to your location," says Clark Freifield, a Ph.D. student at MIT's Media Lab and a co-founder of HealthMap. See the top iPhone applications...
...Outbreaks app also allows users to do their own surveillance and reporting - you can send messages and images to HealthMap about disease flare-ups in your area. The idea is to further broaden the net of health information beyond official sources. Think how useful a few iPhone-armed people in Mexico might have been during the initial waves of the H1N1 outbreak last spring - or how they might affect the upcoming flu season in the U.S. this autumn. "We're not sure what kind of response we'll see, but the idea is to develop a two-way flow...
...instant, having an imperfect network is better than none at all. "This is an alert tool that is not trying to raise fear but awareness instead," says Brownstein. "We want to encourage good public-health information, and at the end of the day that's what this app is about." Knowing too much may be scary, but knowing nothing is far more dangerous...
Download the new TIME iPhone app at app.time.com...