Monday, April 16, 2007

I'd call it "Where is Sick?"

Who is sick? is a website that allows anonymous posters to link their symptoms with a geographical location on a googlemap. When you go to the site you can see all* the runny noses in LA and coughs in Berkeley. The tool was designed to help provide people with current local sickness information.

The creators say:

"Who Is Sick was started in 2006 with a mission to provide current and local sickness information to the public - without the hassle of dealing with hospitals or doctors. With a strong belief in the power of people and a faith that user generated content can be extremely valuable, our team set out to create an entirely new system for tracking and monitoring sickness information."

"Given the relatively slower adoption of internet and "web 2.0' technology by much of the healthcare industry, our team of healthcare professionals, technology entrepreneurs, mothers, fathers, and caregivers set out to create a simple, user-friendly, and valuable website for the average consumer. We are currently building out our team and expanding our technology breadth across new and exciting areas of healthcare with Who Is Sick as our first offering. Stay tuned for more!"

The tool could be used to communicate STD hotspots in the future. *However, posters to the site are most definitely a biased sample of the ill.

The mapping tool is will be easy to use for anyone familiar with googlemaps, and the little pies...well, they look like Trivial Pursuit pies.

As for the slow adoption of Web2.0 to the healthcare field. They nailed it.

Update: BioSense, a CDC project makes much more sense, particularly because you have to apply to participate.

2 comments:

dallas said...

I have to say that I think this website will drive hypochondriacs crazy!

Phalligator said...

You are so right!