Smartphones and other mobile devices are playing a much bigger role when it comes to tracking the health and well-being of patients. A new endeavor was recently undertaken by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Population Health Sciences Department and Survey Analytics, taking aim at this kind of mobile monitoring. The mission’s goal is to try and track flu activity by using a crowdsourcing smartphone application.The application has been dubbed OutSmart Flu and has been made available on Android and iOS platforms.
The ultimate goal of the launch of this particular application is to see whether crowdsourcing might be able to better track flu outbreaks than more traditional approaches. OutSmart Flu asks users general health questions while also having people report whether they are feeling well, feeling sick or have flu-like symptoms.
Currently, the most used method of tracking flu outbreaks is done by having the CDC partner with more than 3,000 clinics across the United States. This method relies on counting the number patients who walk through clinic doors reporting influenza-like illnesses. While this method is the one most relied upon when reporting on outbreaks, the application was developed after Google showed in 2010 that it could identify a flu epidemic in the U.S. two weeks earlier than the CDC method.
"With OutSmart Flu, we are crowd-sourcing flu surveillance at UW-Madison," said Dr. Ajay Sethi, one of the developers of the application in a recent statement. "Beyond just collecting the data, we are making it available in near-real time to our campus community. Students, faculty and staff – whether sick or well – likely want to know if something is going around on campus, especially as we approach peak flu season. Our app might encourage those on campus to be more aware of when the virus is going around, to encourage taking precautions like washing hands a little longer or making an extra effort to get the flu shot."
Edited by
Rachel Ramsey
