Who is Sick? is a new site that lets you know what sort of sicknesses are breaking out in your area.
If you’re suffering a headache or feeling nauseous, it could be related to your environment, and those around you — and it’s helpful to know that. By typing in your zip code, you can see whether anyone else near you has reported similar symptoms. It lets anyone access the site and update sickness information immediately. The company’s founder PT Lee seeded the site with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but has since relied on user submissions.
CDC’s BioSense, which hospitals and public health departments use to detect disease outbreaks, is restricted to use only by officials of those organizations. CDC also has weekly updated flu site. However, there are no other ways to get real-time information about these and other symptoms. So far, as you’ll see in screenshot below, the site tracks the following: fever, headache, muscle ache, runny nose and stomach ache. There’s also a “more symptoms” option and a box where you can describe your symptoms in detail.
This is a great way to help in the defense against possible pandemics like a bird-flu pandemic, however Lee said he is not tracking such symptoms for now, and doesn’t want to. That, ebola, e-coli, AIDS are all being tracked by other sites, and he wanted to track more common sicknesses. Also, the site is vulnerable to scare-mongers, who may spam the site with false reports. Lee told VentureBeat he is limiting each visitor session to five submissions, and is working on a way to track IP addresses, and to produce a community red-flag system, which would let users alert Lee’s team to possible spam. He’s also doing database analysis, looking for suspicious patterns, though admits he’s cleaning up about six hours behind submission times — and has deleted about 30 posts.
Still, we’d encourage Who is Sick to obtain sophisticated tracking and moderation techniques, so that it can be more comprehensive — and track the more serious diseases. That would boost its traffic and make it even more useful.
The self-funded company is based out of Los Angeles, CA.
(This post was written with assistance from Rex Dixon)
10 Comments
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cg said:
you gotta be kidding me
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Skeptic said:
Looks totally useless to me. Nice graphs though.
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Parent said:
as a parent, I love the site. its pretty basic but personally, would check this site often just to see what was going around. like an interactive weather map.
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WTF said:
if you’re sick are you really going to want to bother submitting your disease on this website? personally i’d prefer to get some sleep.
and what if you have something like The Clap? You going to put that on there?
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Rakesh said:
Interesting, I agree that I might not myself submit but would definitely submit for somebody else in family! What I like is it so local and current, and user driven unlike CDC which is so dependent on only cases when somebody goes to hospital, and I hope their filters are decent in terms of spam. I have four year old son. My son got hand-mouth-foot infection which he acquired from another kid at school last week and is out of commission right now since it is very infectious and my wife is having hard time managing him at home.
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Rex Dixon said:
Hey all - It’s not perfect, but neither are a lot of new sites. What will make a site better is user interaction and feedback to the ones building it.
Rex
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Thad said:
I am not health buff but from technology perspective what I like about this site is that it is unlike any google map mashup that I have come across. Mashup usually take data feeds from different sources and then map it. However whoissick seems pretty much user driven, so that to me sounds like a very interesting experiment. Will watch to see how to flourishes or perishes.
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J said:
It is a little scary to see all these sickness postings but I guess I would rather know and have access to this than call my doctor to find out…Its a great interface though - really neat features with the live updating graphs and stuff.
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hypo said:
The CNET video on their site is great….”cough, cough, hack…uh, boss…I
think I’m coming down with something…no, really, I am sick - just check
out WhoIsSick…there is definitely something going around…cough,
sneeze…”Hypochondriacs arise!
Seriously, I think the site is interesting - especially once it gets more
traction. Its definitely a very innovative approach to healthcare. -
Rex Dixon said:
Yes, it’s starting to get some traction now. I see that WWD covered it today. :)
Rex
