[Infowarrior] - User-generated epidemiology map

[Richard Forno]

(c/o boignboing)

http://whoissick.org/sickness/

The CDC (Center for Disease Control) provides flu data but only to the State
level and only on a time scale of 1 week. For example, they will report that
in the state of California, last week, there were 539 cases of the flu
reported. While this information may be useful for some health practitioners
or academics, for the average individual, this does not come in handy when
they are trying to figure out what kinds of sicknesses are going around
their area. It is not local enough, timely enough, or broad enough because
they don't cover different types of sicknesses.

In contract, whoissick provides local (down to the zip code level), timely
(within a day), and broad (many different symptoms, not just the flu)
sickness information. Some typical use cases for a user would be

1. I am feeling a little sick and want to check what sicknesses are going
around in my local area - probably within 10 or 20 miles from where I live
or work.
2. I am traveling to another area of the country and want to know if there
are sicknesses going around that I need to be careful of
3. I live in an area where I notice lots of people getting sick, so in
preparation, I can take an AirBorne or vitamins to prevent catching anything

To date, the only way to get information like this is probably to call
multiple places (hospitals, doctors, clinics, schools, etc) and ask what is
currently going around. Not very organized or efficient.

We hope to change this.