#sickweather

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Sickweather, the Baltimore-based company that was named in the “100 Brilliant Companies” by Entrepreneur magazine in 2012, may find itself front and center with the Zika virus well established and the Rio-planned Olympics just around the corner.

So who is this company and what does it do? Sickweather is an illness tracking, reporting, and forecasting site that has been successful in predicting illness outbreaks. In fact, it was able to predict a recent flu outbreak six weeks sooner than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention––and its map works in real time. Through a series of algorithms, Sickweather is able to scan through social media users’ public posts and pick up on key phrases about being sick. Further enhancing its already successful algorithms method is its new open messaging platform, Sickweather Groups. In this platform, users can anonymously report symptoms to specific locations. All of this is managed on a real-time map enabling users everywhere to check the health status in their area. When new symptoms are reported a cross-referenced search occurs, and when multiple accounts are verified a new “hot spot” is created. Users are able to zoom in on both the web and mobile app versions, on individual cases as well as to a street-level view.

This system is most likely going to become an important tool to track the spread of the Zika virus during the Olympics, just as it was used to inform consumers and managers alike about E. coli infections during the Chipotle outbreak and the measles in DisneyLand. Although Sickweather has been out for a few years, in today’s health environment, we are predicting an uptick in users.  

By Ashley M. Sousa

I’ve spent most of the past week lying in bed, sleeping and watching Netflix. This would probably have been a lot of fun if I were doing it by choice, but if you add the constant need to blow my nose, that I go from chills to sweating in minutes, and the fact that it feels like someone is rubbing sandpaper against my throat, going to work and school sounds like a much better alternative.

Being in the generation I am, I took to twitter to get out my frustrations of being sick. And I’ve seen friends and family do this too. We post everything else about our lives on social media, so naturally we’re going to talk about it when we’re sick.

Sickweather is an app that monitors publicly posted social media and creates a map to let you know who around you is sick, and where they are. It also allows users to submit if they are feeling sick (much like competitor Flu Near You), but relies most heavily on the social media postings. It’s compatible with the apple watch, and uses location services to let you know if any sicknesses are going around in your area, and what they may be.

For example, looking at the map, I know that someone at Suffolk has the flu, a person on Charles street is having terrible allergies, and that the common cold is going around Somerville. The app maintains privacy by not posting any identities of the inflicted individuals, just their locations and the reported symptoms.