Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Cool new procrastination tool

Sign up, sign up, to join the internet revolution in health surveillance...

Flutracking.net is a program designed to track seasonal & possible pandemic influenza through 2 simple questions.

Do you have fever?
Do you have a cough?

They have been able to identify the lift-off point for the flu season with amazing accuracy - and 10 seconds of volunteer's time per week.

The whole concept is fascinating - use volunteers and modern day connectivity, simplify as much as possible to keep them engaged, and every week you have data from ten thousand people - and results in less than 24 hours. By comparing vaccinated vs non-vaccinated, they can sift out the true flu over the background sneezing.

Now what else could be done with that power?