Rumors of a disease outbreak a century ago probably would have left people feeling frightened, wondering whether their town would be the next to be hit.
Now, the well but worried can download a flu-tracking application. It will tell them where in their state an H1N1 outbreak has occurred, the best ways to avoid it, and when vaccines will be available nearby. They also can find news on how some of the afflicted are doing.
Outbreaks Near Me, a new, free application developed by non-profit HealthMap, is among a slew of flu-themed applications available from the iTunes App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch owners.
Two dozen other flu-related apps have been created recently, including HMSMobile Swine Flu Center, by Harvard Medical School, which offers medical advice with animations. Others include flu games and jokes: Swine Scan supposedly scans your body to detect infection.
Outbreaks Near Me works like a GPS device. It finds your location and tells you where H1N1 and other infectious outbreaks are occurring nearby with a display of pushpins on a map. Click on a pushpin and you can read news reports as well as personal accounts submitted by users. It also lets you set up an alert system, so if H1N1 arrives in your area, you'll get a heads-up.
It is "all about giving people real-time alerts. We didn't develop this to increase fear. It's about helping people arm themselves," says John Brownstein, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. He and colleagues developed the app at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab.
H1N1, popularly known as swine flu, has infected an estimated 22 million Americans this year from April to October, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has linked the outbreak to almost 4,000 deaths, including 540 children.
Since Outbreaks Near Me launched Sept. 1, about 100,000 people have downloaded it, Brownstein says. Though the app also reports recent E. coli, malaria and other outbreaks, H1N1 has by far been the most-searched disease, he says.
Brownstein says the app has received more than 2,000 submissions: "People take photos of themselves in bed sick, or e-mail in to say their school is closed, or that there's a vaccine shortage in their area."
Outbreaks Near Me co-developer Clark Freifeld, a graduate student in media art and sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says developers are analyzing submissions now and say the information appears to correlate with CDC data. That suggests the iPhone may be a sensitive tool for monitoring early outbreak trends, Freifeld says.
For big-picture influenza news, most people probably get information the traditional way: from CDC reports, says influenza expert William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. Apps may be best when you want more focused information, he says, "like what is happening in grandma's town, where you're going for Thanksgiving."
The CDC does not comment on products such as apps, spokeswoman Karen Hunter says. Hunter says the agency is in the prototype stage of several new flu apps for iPhone and the Google Android, and it's already using mobile text messaging (to sign up, text HEALTH to 87000) and a mobile website (http://m.cdc.gov) to distribute flu updates to tens of thousands of subscribers.
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