App of the Week – Sickweather

No one enjoys being sick. And if we can avoid any situation where we might pick up something up we will. Sickweather helps you do just that. This app alerts you to illnesses in your area or areas where you maybe traveling to.  Sickweather scans social networks such as Twitter and Facebook for indicators or patterns of illness outbreaks. It permits the user to check for the potential of sickness as easily as you can check for the chance of rain.

The nation is entering the winter cold and flu season and you can believe that someone around you is going to get it. Now this app will not identify that person directly but if you can find the flu hotspot before you get to it you stand a chance to avoid it by taking precautions. To give you an example you maybe able to see that your workplace is in the middle of flu outbreak with this app. Or you could report your workplace has a flu outbreak. Sickweather can alert you that your child’s school is having an outbreak. This app lets you find the germs and viruses before they find you.

Sickweather takes advantage of people who sometimes over share. You know the ones who will tell all their Facebook friends the French fries are cold at the burger place they frequent.  They will also tweet they have the flu or post to Facebook they are down with bronchitis. Whenever those posts and tweets are made publicly available by the user with geographic location information the app is able to track and map the information using a patent-pending algorithm.

People who become a member of Sickweather can report their illness anonymously directly to the map and forecast via the mobile app and website. Any illness that is reported will be matched to the sicknesses the app has already collected and is tracking. If you report symptoms or illnesses the site is not tracking that information will be processed by the algorithm to automatically make suggestions for expanding Sickweather’s tracking capabilities. The app allows you to connect with Facebook and Twitter to share the post with your friends if you haven’t already.

When sickness reports appear to aggregate close to one another at approximately the same time they are grouped as potential “storm” activity. Users of Sickweather can look at the live maps and see these storms illustrated by the ‘sick” balloon. You can also zoom in on the map and see the individual sick reports down to the street level.

Sickweather alerts are extracted from Facebook and Twitter by a patent-pending process. This real-time data allows the app to spot sickness outbreaks far in advance of traditional disease surveillance tools. Don’t be the last to know the flu is hitting your city, neighborhood or workplace hard. The user can sign up for Sickweather Alerts and get the word via email.

Sickweather is available on Apple and Android.