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New iPhone App Spreads News of Disease Outbreaks

by Evan Shamoon on September 2, 2009 at 03:14 PM




For a culture that feeds ground-up, dead cows to living cows in the name of economics, we sure do get paranoid when it comes to disease. And there's no better sign of that paranoia than the Outbreaks Near Me iPhone app, which allows users to access disease outbreak information.

The app is based on the free HealthMap Web site, but improves upon it by letting users add to the knowledge base. When there's public-health trouble in the area, users can share the information with the rest of the community.

"Say you're in a clinical setting as a patient or clinician and seeing lots of unusual cases of something," Clark Freifeld, a founder of HealthMap and Ph.D. student in MIT Media Lab's New Media Medicine Group, told Wired.com. "You'd be able to note that down and submit it into the system." Mere hours after the app's release, HealthMap had already been informed of an illness at a school.

The service won't rely solely on man-on-the-street input, however; it takes information from various accredited news sources, as well. The idea, though, is that user submissions will start to relay preliminary warnings before official services are able to react. "It's about empowering citizens in the cause of public health to both provide them with information and allow them to contribute information to share with others," Freifeld explained to Wired.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled meal of chicken raised on chicken, cow raised on cow, etc. [From: Wired]

Tags: app store, AppStore, health, healthmap, iphone, iphone app, IphoneApp, ipod touch, IpodTouch, security, top

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