Word: healthmap
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...Track the outbreaks near you through the HealthMap...
...Track the outbreaks near you through the HealthMap...
...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...
Certainly, opening HealthMap to user-based reports could introduce an element of chaos, and even outright panic, into disease surveillance - ordinary people aren't trained epidemiologists. Global health officials already struggle to separate the noise from the truth; for every actual outbreak of a new disease, there are countless false or overstated reports. But in an interconnected age, when both information and disease can spread in an 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...