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‘Outbreaks Near Me’ is the new iPhone application which will enable the users to track and report outbreak of infectious diseases like H1N1 or swine flu in real time.
‘HealthMap’ which is an online resource that collects, filters, maps and disseminates information about emerging infectious diseases has developed "Outbreaks Near Me’ application.
This new application will provides a new, contextualized view of a users specific location. It will pinpoint the outbreaks that have been reported near the user and will also help in searching for additional outbreak information by location or disease.
John Brownstein, the co-founder of Healthmap and assistant professor in the Children's Hospital (Boston) Informatics Program (CHIP) said, "We hope individuals will find the new application to be a useful source of outbreak information - locally, nationally, and globally”.
"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”, he added.
With the help of iPhone, the users can interact with the Healthmap team and can submit an outbreak report and photos of the situations leading to disease. The report after being reviewed by the Healthmap team will be posted as an alert on the worldwide map.
Clark Freifeld, the co-founder of Healthmap and a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab and research software developer at CHIP, said, "This is grassroots, participatory epidemiology”.
